Did you know there was a time where infectious diseases like the common cold could kill you and your family? This was the elizabethan era probably the last time where sickness became the “grimm reaper” before modern medical advancements. With infectious diseases spreading and killing so many people doctors became desperate. Because these doctors knew very little about medicine, they were completely willing to try experimental treatments on their patients (Alchin). Sadly just about anybody with an infectious disease died. All the knowledge these doctors knew were based on: Humours, what brain function each internal organ controls, and how to protect themselves from it.
Furthermore, the basic knowledge all these doctors knew were: There are only four elements in the world,each element represented a humour, and all four humours are balanced in the human body. Humours are “natural bodily fluids. They correspond to the elements and have various qualities: cold, dry, hot, and moist.” (Ross) The four elements are: earth, air, water, and fire. The Humour for earth was black bile meaning melancholic or sad - black bile really is the foam off the top of blood. Air’s humour is blood meaning sanguine or lusty. Water’s humour may gross people out… it’s phlegm meaning phlegmatic or sluggish. Lastly fire’s humour is yellow bile meaning temperamental or angry - yellow bile is also choler (Ross). All four humours are supposed to be balance the cause of diseases were if one was out of balance (Alchin).
As previously stated, the doctors of that era believed a person would get sick if one of the humor were out of balance. To restore balance doctors would bleed the patients. Bleeding was not done with leeches but with a bowl and pricking needle ...
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... coffin. The Wealthy provided the black clothing to their invited guest (McKenzie). This helped avoid having a guest offend with their clothing choices.
To conclude, medicine of this time was so sad that death was inevitable. They couldn’t blame the doctors or even themselves for the cause of all these diseases because they didn’t really know what to do. Doctors were experimenting and taking lives but not learning from their ineffective practices like bleeding or leeching. Religion was probably the best possible choice for that time.
Works Cited
Ross, Maggi “Science and Health” Elizabethan.org/. N.p., 26 Mar 2008 Web 17 jan 2014
Alchin, Linda. “Elizabethan Medicine and Illnesses” www.elizabethan-era.org. UK. N.P. 16 May 2012 Web. 17 Jan 2014
McKenzie, Eleanor. “Funeral Rites & Customs in Elizabethan England” Classroom.synonym.com/ Demand Media Web 20 Jan 2014
but this was the best they could do. The search for effective treatments was hindered by the church as they believed that religion was the cure for the sick. The believe that Saints could cure by touch
Beginning around 460 BC, the concept of humoralism emerged throughout the written works of Hippocrates. These early works, some of the only medical works of this detailed nature to survive this period, delineated one of the first ways scholars and physicians viewed the body and more importantly illness. Shaped by the Hippocratics’ version of humoralism and his own interpretations of their written works, Galen resolutely supported the fundamental four-element theory, the notion of the four humors, and the essential practice of healing by applying opposites by physicians. However, Galen’s education in anatomy proved an effective advance in his medical reasoning away from a non-ontological view of illness into a considerably more ontological and
In modern medicine when an ailment arises it can be quickly diagnosed, attributed to a precise bacteria, virus, or body system, and treated with medication, surgery or therapy. During the time before rational medical thought, this streamlined system of treatment was unheard of, and all complaints were attributed to the will of the multitude of commonly worshiped Greek gods (Greek Medicine 1). It was during the period of Greek rationalism that a perceptible change in thought was manifested in the attitudes towards treating disease. Ancient Greece is often associated with its many brilliant philosophers, and these great thinkers were some of the first innovators to make major developments in astrology, physics, math and even medicine. Among these academics was Hippocrates, one of the first e...
Even today, children innocently chant this old nursery rhyme, bringing the old saying into reality, “Ignorance is Bliss”. It’s eerie, to think that this old rhyme in fact gives a perfect description of one of Europe’s worst nightmares, the Great Plague. Many people forget the horrors of the Plague, and when they do remember and think about it, Public heath is rarely a factor that plays a big part when people start to think things through.
One of the most widely known and important of the beliefs was the humours. It was believed that every living creature was composed of four elements, the humours. They were blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and melancholy (or black bile). It was believed that the overall total combination of these four elements determined the person’s characteristics. For example, a person with more blood than other humours was hot and wet in their nature, a person with more phlegm was cold and wet, a person with more choler was hot and dry, and a person with melancholy being the dominant humour was cold and dry. It was also believed that too much of a certain humour caused disease. That meant the removing or avoiding the dominant humour could cure any disease.
The medication in the Elizabethan Era was very basic.When horrible diseases came such as the bubonic plague which is also known as the Black Death. They medication back then wasn’t strong enough to fight off the symptoms(Philip Stubbles). The Physicians in this era had no idea where the bubonic plague came from and they were very skeptical about finding a cure. The Physicians started to study patients that had the plague, studying there blood flow to see what caused this disease(Linda Alcin 1).Even though they study their patients they still couldn’t find what had caused this disease the best answer that they came up was to bleed there
Those are some of the examples of how they might've been diagnosed, and how they should've been evaluation now. Except it probably doesn't help with the lack of doctors in the 1600s, but this is all basically
Doctors believed the human body was part of the universe, so they used elements for each humour, “Yellow bile was the equivalent of fire. Phlegm was the equivalent of water. Black bile was the equivalent of earth and blood was the equivalent of air”(“Shakespearean and Elizabethan Medicine”). Also, because of their beliefs and lack of knowledge on serious medical conditions, most severe cases were not treated accurately. Some doctors believed if a person broke a bone, then it was never supposed to be used again because the accident was based from many sins of the soul (“Shakespearean and Elizabethan Medicine”). The doctors also believed in completely covering their body when treating a patient. It was thought that if they wore boots, gloves, masks and robes, then they would be protected from the diseases. They also wore an amulet around their waste, filled with dried blood and ground up toads (Alchin). Although this may seem out of the ordinary today, these precautions were something an Elizabethan doctor did not go
Although he lived four centuries before the birth of Christ, a man named Hippocrates recorded the symptoms of diseases we still see to this day. Known as the “Father of Medicine” (Hippocrates), Hippocrates was an ancient physician who studied and recorded his observances of the body’s infections and physiology. He set forth the foundation for future physicians, and in doing so, is accredited for our knowledge of infectious diseases in earlier centuries. During this time however, many believed the earth and its inhabitants were composed of four general elements: air, water, fire, and dirt. They also believed that any one person who fell ill was being punished by the gods. As a foresighted thinker though, Hippocrates encouraged the idea that humans became ill due to natural causes. In that wisdom, he recorded all his observances of his patients and their illnesses, taking careful note of the bodily symptoms and their progression.
"Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions." Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. .
In the Renaissance, some aspects of medicine and doctors were still in a Dark Age. Outbreaks of disease were common, doctors were poor, medicine was primitive and many times doctors would kill a patient with a severe treatment for a minor disease! But, there were other sections where medicine and the use of medications improved greatly. This paper is written to illustrate the "light and dark" sides of medicine in the Renaissance.
Disease and death are most often associated with the Middle Ages because of the widespread plagues and ignorance of medical knowledge during that time period. It is difficult, however, to ascertain the true nature of illness in the early Medieval Ages because in some written sources, the author’s standpoint distorts the presentation of the disease or cause of a person’s death so that the biological cause is skewed and unattainable.
As well as being connected with seasons, the four humors were also linked to four elements of nature. Black bile was associated with Earth, blood with air, fire with yellow bile and phlegm with water. This theory of nature and the body being interrelated was also proposed by Empedocles. Also each of these was also connected with the type of personality one presented. Too much earth made a person melancholic, which meant they were very depressed and saddened often.
...on’s humoral imbalance (Darnton). Whenever a person was on a treatment for humoral imbalance it was always important to record the patients’ medical histories (Pickover 40). The humoral theory and these practices were used by doctors and was one of the central principles in Western Medicine from antiquity through the nineteenth century until it was discredited in the early nineteenth century (Darnton).
Before the finding of the medicine treatment in the seventeenth century, people dealt with many deaths from many epidemics. Illness worsen as time grew because of smallpox, yellow fever, measles, and etc. A cure for these types of illness could not be found by any treatment, therefore the life span was up to the age of 35 years because of the untreated diseases, unsanitary places, and unwashed hands. Thus, until the era of the seventeenth century came along, medical treatments started to rise forth with the great changes in medicine and science. During this time, physicians were introduced, patients finally came across treatments, and medical practices were used.