Elizabethan Era Medicine

The Medicine Used During This Period

Bubonic Plague was treated by lancing the buboes and applying a warm poultice of butter, onion and garlic. Various other remedies were tried including tobacco, arsenic, lily root and dried toad!

Illness causes

• Ignorance and fear of the unknown caused people to be scared of doing certain things that instead of helping them would put their life and health at risk
• For example : The Bubonic Plague , people thought that not taking showers would clog there pours therefore not allowing the disease to enter their body

Elizabethan England

It is though that the "black plague" most likely

originated in Asia and spread to Europe by rodents and insects.

The doctors of England didn't know how to cure a disease that is new and fatal, most based their work on ancient greeks like Aristotle and Hippocrates

• In this era of innovation and eradication, the poor struggled for survival, the rich pulled through this conflict, but not with ease.

• Both classes relied on the faulty medicine of people who didn't even understand these illness fully.

Medical Beliefs and Practices

Hospitals

One of the most common beliefs during this time concerned humours which were believed to have entered into men in the blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy. According to this belief, the predominance of one humour over the others determined a person's temperament as sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholy.

• every day there would be about 300 people lined up at the gate
• Nurses would pick 30 people of which in their perspective were in desperate need of medical attention
• Inside there was eight sisters who would help out the ill est patients
• most hospitals were mostly two stories on the top floor were adults recovering from injuries and on the bottom floor were infants being treated of diseases

Diseases

There were many illness that ravaged the lands of Europe and Asia. These included Typhoid, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Diphtheria, Smallpox and the infamous Bubonic plague.

Lifespan

• Furthermore lifespan back in this era was not the same as in today
• Due to the technology not being as advanced people would not live to be as old as most of us humans do now
• An averaged adult back then lived only as little as 35-40 years due to the lack of technology and scientific research

Cure unknown Diseases

• Many diseases were not yet identified therefore not knowing how to cure them.
• During that era most medicine was contributed herbal, doctors gave their patients the most powerful and strongest herbs
• Another common idea was to use leeches to suck out the "bad blood"

Thank you for your time !!!!

Any questions or comments ?

Doctors

• During this time doctors were not fully educated. Most of their work was based on the greeks, guesses and superstitions and what they thought was best

Sources

• http://www.william-shakespeare.info/bubonic-black-plague-elizabethan-era.htm
• http://www2.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/Medbelprac.html
• http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-medicine-and-illnesses.htm
• http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/

Elizabethan Era Medicine

By : Alejandro Torres , Eduardo Orozco , Javier Mendez , & Alejandra Hernandez