Elizabethan Health and Medicine

The Health Standards of the 16th Century

• Elizabethans often contracted the Bubonic Plague (Black Death), Typhoid, anemis, tuberculosis, gout, influenza, syphilis, and other STDs
• Lack of sanitation, including rats, fleas, and lice, perpetuated diseases

Health Standards (Cont'd)

• Waste was dumped into rivers such as the Thames which was a major water source
• Illness due to lack of hygiene was not an accepted idea

Disease was thought to be punishment for sin (and perhaps cleanliness)

Humours

• The human body was thought to have been made up of five humours or fluids
• Inherited from ancient and medieval medical traditions
• Five types of humours: phlegm, blood, choler, yellow bile, and black bile

Humours (cont'd)

• Physical and mental characteristics were explained by different proportions of these fluids in individuals
• Imbalances of humours were treated by changes in diet or the drawing of blood

Humours (Cont'd)

• Phlegm - phlegmatic - calm, temperament
• Blood - "sanguine" - passionate
• Yellow bile - "choleric" - irascible
• Black bile - "melancholy" - depressive

Humours Quiz!

"Sicknesse comes ordinarily and usually of sinne." - William Perkins (1608-1631)

"God is delighted in cleanliness, both bodily and ghostly, and detesteth sluttishness." - Robert Southwell

Bubonic Plague

• Black Death"
• Spread through rats, fleas, and infected people
• Outbreak in 1563 killed thousands and closed all theaters in London

Plague Doctors

• Wore long, dark robes with pointed hoods, leather gloves, and boots
• Birdlike masks with long 'Beaks' filled with citrus oil
• Translates to long hospital gowns, surgical masks, and gloves used today

Plague doctors (Cont'd)

• Doused themselves with vinegar and chewed angelica for protection from diseases

Plague doctors

Medicine

• Compounds of herbs
• Dispensed by an apothecary
• Concoctions, though beneficial could be harmful or even poisonous
• Medical treatment was based on one's ability to pay for it

Hierarchy of physicians

• Physicians - educated at universities and the college of physicians
• Surgeons
• barbers - members of the company of barber surgeons; could only pull teeth and draw blood

hierarchy of physicians (cont'd)

• Apothecaries - belonged to the grocer's guild; sold drugs, sweets, cosmetics, and perfumes
• the church - provided limited care to the poor

Hierarchy of physicians (cont'd)

• local 'Wise Woman' - first person in response to the poor
• housewife - created homemade medicines with herbs

Treatment

• Bubonic Plague - applying a warm poultice of butter onion and garlic; tobacco, lily root, and dried toad
• Head Aches - Sweet-Smelling herbs such as rose, lavender, and sage
• Stomach Pains - Wormwood, Mint, and Balm

treatment (cont'd)

• Lung Problems - Liquorice and Comfrey
• General wounds were treated with vinegar
• Vinegar was used a cleaning agent that was believed to kill disease

William Harvey

• physician and natural historian
• studied at cambridge before studying at padua, an esteemed medical college in europe
• became a fellow of the royal college of physicians in 1607

william harvey (cont'd)

• Published An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings in 1628
• demonstrated how blood circulates through the body
• fundamental to modern understandings of the role of the heart in the body