Do you think medieval people built immunities to flea and lice type itch?

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think it was more of the animals in the cities being riddled with fleas and lice. obviously people got fleas and lice more frequently but i doubt they just dealt with them all day ignoring them

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In 1296, for example, Bernard de Gordon associated lice particularly with the urban poor and members of monastic orders, groups known for living densely and taking less care to bathe (among other things, not washing regularly by choice was perceived as a demonstration of ascetic spirituality and holiness. The wearing of hairshirts as, yup, another practice of asceticism was likewise common among medieval religious men and women and would have allowed for vermin infestations as well).

People tried means both chemical and mechanical to rid themselves of lice. The narrowest-toothed combs discovered in archaeological digs tend to have remnants of lice trapped between the teeth. This matches surviving woodcuts of women combing men's hair that illustrate the "pediculi" passage in the earliest printed medical texts.

Medical texts record a range of options for dealing with lice. The Trotula, a 12th century anthology of medical and hygenic advice famous for its focus on women and partial female authorship, says that lice in pubic and armpit hair are best dealt with through a mixture of ash and oil. Lice on the head require a mixture of aloe, mercury, and incense.

Mercury in particular was a commonly cited cure by the late Middle Ages, and in fact, is one of the ways we can connect medical texts with medical practice. (NOT always a given in the Middle Ages. See also: one of the prescribed means of contraception in the Islamic medical tradition is for a woman to spit three times into the mouth of a frog.) The body of Ferdinand II of Aragon, who had much more success as the king of Naples, was discovered to have both a massive lice infestation and signs of treatment with mercury. Archaeologists posit that the mercury was indeed applied in an attempt to treat the lice. (Fornanciari et al., 2009)

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Fleas are the main way the plague spread

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Everyone knows that the plague was created in a midevil Chinese lab in Wuhan.

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