Did health decline in the middle ages?

GCSE: History

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By 800AD Viking York had become a major city and trade improved again. The diet was more varied and less people died form nurturance deficiencies. There diet had a lot more protein than in Saxon York so the child mortality rate was higher, but the cleanliness of the city if any thing had got weirs. The life stock was lift to rome free in the street, and because the city was growing so fast waste and rubbish built up in the city. Many people had worms as much of the water was taken from form contaminated rives or from pits that were often next to cesspits. Health did not improve much because of the lack of hygiene in Viking York and neither did the life expectancy of most people.
Norman York started in 1066 and by then York had a population of about 9,000. Many of the houses (about one sixth) had been destroyed to make room for two Norman castle in the Norman Conquest. Even more buildings were destroyed in the rebellion that followed. When the houses were rebuilt they were built out of stone or at least had stone foundations and many had fired clay tiles the harvests, also improved a lot after the Normans moved in. this combined to make York a heather city. The city was beginning to return to the standard that it was before the fall of the Roman Empire. Some stone sewers were being built and the standard of living was a lot better. The diet was varied and the hygiene had improved greatly, but even this did not change the low life expectance of the average people of York. Many women still died in childbirth and infection was also a big problem as the connection between dirt and disease had still not been made.
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