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Common Disease In Elizabethan England

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Owning the complete collection of Grey’s Anatomy may make someone feel like an expert of the medical field, but when it comes down to knowing the diseases that were common during other periods of time, that understanding seems to be very limited. While diseases like the common cold have been around for a long time, there are many staple diseases that have shaped the medical field and the foundation for medicine today that need to be known. To fully understand diseases during the Elizabethan era, it is vital to understand the cause, type, and treatment of the illnesses that were common during that time period.
There are many types of diseases that we evident during Elizabethan England, but it was because of the lack of hygiene and sanitation …show more content…

Common diseases during that time included anaemia, rheumatism, arthritis, tuberculosis and dysentery (known as the flux), and the Bubonic Plague. Many factors made diseases dangerous. Fever during pregnancy was dangerous. Also, the white makeup applied to women 's faces was poisonous (lead-based) causing a lot of them to become sick. Influenza as well as STDs were common, including Syphilis. According to Lia Ramsey in her article, Templateeliz, “Epidemic diseases became more common in the sixteenth century.” They included typhus, smallpox, diphtheria, and measles. There were epidemics of plague in children along with measles, smallpox, scarlet fever. Chicken pox, and diphtheria. No matter how common or widespread each type of disease was, each one affected a human life, and affected the population of Elizabethan …show more content…

While it was not possible for everyone to be healed, there were ways in order to treat the diseases. For example, the Bubonic Plague was treated by lancing the sores and applying butter, onion, and garlic. Other ingredients like tobacco, arsenic, lily root, and dried toad were also used. Head pains were treated with sweet herbs like rose or lavender. Stomach pains were treated with wormwood, mint, and balm. Lung issues were treated through liquorice and comfrey. Wounds were issued vinegar because it was believed to kill disease. There was many kinds of doctors, with physicians at the top of the list. The other doctors included: surgeons, barbers (they could only pull teeth and draw blood), apothecary (dispensed drugs), the church, the “local ‘wise woman’”, and a Elizabethan housewife. Besides the use of ingredients to treat or cure illnesses, the treatment of mental illness was much different. Jean-Baptiste Denis used the technique of instilling blood into the patient. When blood taken from the arteries of lamb were infused into the patient 's veins, they seemed to recover. They later decided to stop using this method when a patient died. While treatments were very limited, the studies taken to discover cures for illnesses, have helped modern doctors to understand more about the

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The season, age and gender try to provide a link between them and the plague. Castenbrandt said, “Dysentery, therefore cannot be characterized as a typical childhood disease”. The reason why was because it still affects other age groups not just the children’s age group, so this does not support any type of link towards the plague. Season wise there would be more affected in autumn, but there would still be deaths through the year. Gender wise it affected both genders even though it was assumed that women would not be affected as much because of their body

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Body Paragraph 3 Middle age medicine could not help the preventing of this deadly disease. Doctors and physicians did not know how to treat the Black Death, so they relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting, boil lancing, and superstitious practices like burning aromatic herbs and bathing and rosewater and

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One being the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, was the deadliest disease in 1346-1353. However, there were a few outbreaks since then. This disease had spread across Europe. The symptoms of the bubonic plague were quite severe. People suffering from this disease, “died quickly-sometimes overnight-and in great agony, coughing up blood and oozing pus and blood from ugly black sores the size of eggs” (Tignor 407).

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Head pains were treated with sweet smelling herbs such as rose, lavender, sage and bay. Stomach pains were treated with wormwood, mint and balm. Amputations were performed by surgeons the ‘stump’ was cauterized with a pitch. Wounds were treated with vinegar as a cleaning agent and it was believed it would kill the disease. Typhoid, broken bones, wound, abscesses and fractures were treated in unsanitary environments.

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