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Here are some methods that were used throughout history to fight infection. Australian Aborigines discovered that eucalyptus and tea tree bark and leaves could ease certain infections. Other aboriginal societies used local herbs to help ease the symptoms of infection. This was typically tribal knowledge passed down through generations of healers. As ...

The first example of catapulting plague victims into a besieged city was that of Caffa (Modern day Fiodosiya) in the Crimea. This was in fact the first account of plague in European history. Caffa had been under siege by the Mongol (aka. Tartar or Golden Horde) army. The siege had been long a protracted. First starting in 1343, it was lifted by the arrival ...

The oldest human could still live to be over 100 just as they do today. This was of course much rarer. Here's some data from the University of Texas on the matter. Infant Mortality by that page was 31.9% considerably worse than even the worst of the world 60 years ago. This was skewed by infanticide and such.

"Taking a vomit" may have meant more generally taking something to cause vomiting, what we would call an emetic. See eg. http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/tag/17th-century/ If you are ill it's because something is out of balance. It's a lot easier to get stuff out of a patient to adjust the balance - so the popularity of purges, emetics, bloodletting ...

Expanding on @MonsterTruck's comment above, China (especially the east part) is really good for food production. According to Wikipedia's list of countries by agricultural output China has 17 per cent of global agricultural production today, compared to around 7 for the European Union, 7 for India and 4 for the United States. I would expect the construction ...

Pre-19th century transplants are not well documented. The first possibly real human transplant was in India. It is unknown if it was successful or not: The first reasonable account is of the Indian surgeon Sushruta in the 2nd century BC, who used autografted skin transplantation in nose reconstruction rhinoplasty. Success or failure of these procedures ...

Your main question has been pretty well answered, but I'd like to clarify a few points: If the attackers had plague victims to toss over the wall, it means they were also exposed to the plague. Which might adversely affect their ability to maintain the siege. Even an extremely virulent plague like the Black Death only killed something like a third to ...

How do you defend against the plague? You seal up any house that gets hit. This was how they controlled the plague in Milan so I'd expect other cities and fortresses took similar measures at various times. Biological Warfare was quite common in the ancient and medieval world.

Though interpretation is always imperfect, many would use folios from the Florentine Codex as direct evidence for mushroom use among Aztecs, and probably Mesoamericans broadly. Here is the prime piece of evidence: A mushroom is depicted, and given the name "Teonanacatl" An Aztec man sits on a mat that is known to be a ceremonial object. The man is ...

China is the world's third largest country in size, after Russia and Canada. The latter two are further north, much colder, and less hospitable to population growth. China is one of the world's oldest civilizations. Others, such as Egypt, Babylon, and even India are much smaller in size. The combination of large land area (in a mostly temperate climate) ...

I'm not sure that this was all that common as a means of overtaking a besieged castle. Perhaps more than anything else, it was intended to have a psychological effect on the occupants. As for how they defended themselves, quite honestly they couldn't. The most common means of handling this was to designate individuals who were responsible for gathering the ...

During the plague years of the Thirteenth Century, towns excluded people that had visited plague cities from entering and ships were sometimes quarantined when entering port. Measures for containing plague inside towns included walling up of houses, inhabitants and all or burning of afflicted villages. Anyone who nursed a plague victim in some towns was ...

Maggot Therapy has been used since ancient times to treat infected wounds. Several anti-microbial plants have also historically been used. None of the treatments were very effective AFAIK.

I could add a few Farming technology. Ancient chinese farming technology is about as advance as post industrial revolution in Europe. Chinese farm all years. Europeans do not have good irrigation system. Ancient chinese cultures measure prosperity by population growth. The idea is if you govern well, people will come to you (like people flocking US and ...

I found an article that indicates that the effects of ether were documented as far back as 1540. It suggests that the first use of ether in surgery was by Dr. Crawford W. Long of Georgia in 1842, when he used ether while performing three separate surgeries. William T.G. Morton contacted Dr. John C. Warren (1778-1856) of Harvard University in 1846 and ...

This thesis appeared in the "The Humans nature" book. Ancients thought it was the work of Hippocrates, but sooner it was the work of his son-in-law Polibius. It is got from STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA (REALE - ANTISERI), the first volume. Oh, wiki says this, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Nature_of_Man (On the Nature of Man is a work in the ...