Medicine+and+Diseases

http://todaysmeet.com/medicinedisease

= = ** Medicine and Disease in the 1600’s ** By, Michael Rodriguez

Back in the Elizabethan Era people didn’t take great care in trying to keep themselves clean and disease free. Many people rarely took baths or even but on fresh clothes daily. People would also throw there “human waste” down into the busy streets below. Only when heavy rain came did all the sewage on the streets wash away. Rats and many other rodents would be scurrying along the streets and fleas would be all over the beds. These unsanitary conditions lead to the easy spread of disease.
 * The Sanitation of the Elizabethan Era **



The people of the time were sick with a lot of diseases but there were one that was the worst out of all diseases of the time;
 * Major Disease of the Time **


 * The Bubonic Plaque- ** Also known as the Black Death this disease caused the deaths of millions around the world. The plaque began in Egypt in 541 CE killing 50 to 60% of the worlds population. The second plaque began in 1346 and within 5 years more than a million people had died in China, and, in Europe, the disease may have killed three out of every four people it infected. The plaque continued for 300 more years, killing 20 to 30 million people in Europe. The third time this plaque erupted was in the mid-1850s. This plague started in the Chinese Empire but with troops moving all around Asia the disease spread all over and was even brought to American ports through trade. The Black Death gets its name because of the symptoms it produces. Some symptoms would include swelling of regional lymph nodes in the groin, behind the knees, and under the arms but the most distinctive feature was the dark color beneath the skin where blood vessels had ruptured, turning the skin black in those areas. The bacteria that causes the illness is Yersinia pestis.

The doctors of the time approach to healing was very different than what we would of have thought of today. The doctors of the past used a combination of superstitions, medicine, and even magic to cure their patients.
 * Doctors and Medicine of the Time **

Alchemy was there form of magic. Alchemy is a basic form of chemistry using the four elements (fire, earth, air, and water). This form of medicine was not very effective until Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim came along. He that there were three basic elements instead of four which were mercury, salt, and sulfur. This improved medicine because salt and sulfur could be mixed while fire and earth could not. People used to think that disease was the imbalance of elements in a person but he believed they could be treated chemically.
 * Alchemy **

Doctors of the past were very different in the way they treated patients. Some ways they were different follow;
 * Doctors **


 * If doctors couldn’t cure patients they ran the risk of death making them make supernatural reasons why patients can’t be cured.
 * Created fantastical reasons to explain why a patient is ill
 * Cures based on superstition and magic
 * Lots of experimentation (Medicine was very primitive at the moment)
 * Used alcohol instead of anesthesia
 * They believed in four “humors” emanating from the liver made up human physiology
 * Four bodily fluids (humors); blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm
 * Blood: Happy, Yellow Bile: Violence, Phlegm: Coward, Black Bile: Lazy
 * Imbalance in all: melancholy
 * Hysteria came from imbalance of all and was considered a women’s disease so it was very shameful if a guy got it.
 * They believed in the three organs to be the basis of your life
 * Liver- Natural Spirits and blood came from it
 * Heart- life and feelings
 * Brain- Reason, imagination, memory, and the rational soul

Shakespeare never liked doctors at all because of there experimentation on patients and not being able to help his daughter Susanna when she had hysteria.


 * Medicine and Disease in Romeo and Juliet **

Romeo is able to buy a poison from a shop when he thought Juliet was dead but she was actually sleeping from a potion. When the messenger tries to deliver the message and is stopped at the gate because they thought he had the bubonic plague.

Best, Michael. "Shakespeare's Life and Times." //Internet Shakespeare Editions//. University of Victoria and the Social Sciences and Huma nities Research Council of Canada, Feb. 1999. Web. 02 Oct. 2011. .
 * Works Cited **

Emmeluth, Donald. "history of the plague." //Health// //Reference Center//. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. .

Graham, Rob. //Shakespeare: a Crash Course//. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2000. Print.