8-2Medicine

WHAT WERE COMMON MEDICAL BELIEFS, PRACTICES, AND MEDICINES IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND? D. Pedro: ** Sigh for the tooth-ache?
 * //prepared by Tieg G//
 * Leon: ** Where is but a humour of a worm? Through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour. This is undation of mistemper'd humour Rests by you only to be qualified; Then pause not; for the present time's so sick, That present medicine must be minister'd.

Disease and plague were a persistent problem in the Elizabethan era. The line above comes From Shakespeare’s Play, __Much ado About Nothing__, which shows us a little of what medical practices and beliefs were in Elizabethan England. One of the common beliefs about medicine was about humours, or the four fluids inside a body, blood, Phlegm, choler, and melancholy. According to their beliefs, an imbalance of these caused disease and to cure such problems, it was advisable to Purge, or to reduce the Bile with the use of drugs. Epidemic diseases became very widespread in the 1600’s. Some of these diseases included typhus, smallpox, diphtheria and others. Gonorrhea and Syphilis were also common diseases that plagued Elizabethan England, and were thought to be cured by mercury or guiac. It was not realized that these diseases were a result of stopping communal baths, and getting water from sewers to drink. When plagues did break out they often spread quickly as a result of the poor hygiene. A song that gives us an idea about what they did to not get sick would be R __ing Around the Rosy.__ This is a child’s rhymes right? Wrong. This song “actually refers to the plagues,” says Victorian health analyst Sabina Gintoff, specifically the bubonic plague which wiped out much of the European population. Breaking up the song, the line __ring around the rosy,__ refer to the dark circles that would appear around the mouths of infected victims, a __pocket full of posies,__ refer to the use of the flower, the posy, that was believed when held up to the nose, would make it so that the harmful air would not infect them even though the problem had nothing to do with the air__. Ashes ashes__, refers to the burning of the corpses, so they would not rot and spread the disease. And finally, __we all fall down__ refers to everybody dying.

Also there were medical houses called apothecaries that when sickness and illness did arise they could try to cure it. They mainly looked for herbal cures or cures in plants to cure illness. These were just some of the problems mainly facing the people in the Elizabethan era.

Work cited

Kassell, Lauren. //Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London//. 1st. 2007. Print. Larkey, Sanford. //Health in Elizabethan England//. 1st. Columbia University Press, 1940. Print. "The Black Death Bubonic Plague during the Elizabethan Era ." Web.16 Apr 2009. .