Medical ‘Emplotment’ and Plotting Medicine: Health and Disease in Late Medieval Portuguese Chronicles

In recent years, historians ofmedicine in theMiddle Ages have tried to decode narratives of health and illness in their original context, attempting to uncover the meanings they may have had for the original audiences, rather than simply using these narratives to plot disease incidence. This article is a study of health, illness and traumatic injury in the chronicles of Fernão Lopes,whowrote in Portugal in the first half of the fifteenth century, focusing on the events of 1383–5, a period of civil war and foreign invasion. Arguing that Lopesmade use of a series ofmedical ‘emplotments’ to construct his history, this study approachesmedievalmedicine in as broada senseas possible engagingwith the roleofmoral and bodily health in a dramatic tale of political ambition and national resurgence.