Health and Hygiene of the Elizabethan Era
By: Nya Lampkin
- Hygiene was not important enough to be considered by the poor class.
- The yeomanry and gentry classes were more passioned with hygiene.
- The nobilty class were the most concerned out of the four classes.
Bathing
- There was no plumbing; water came from wells.
- Wealthy people enjoyed expensive soap.
- They washed their face, neck, and wrists daily.
- Men washed their beards with soap. They trimmed them and made them neat.
- Poor people bathed few times each year.
- Rich people bathed every few weeks.
Oral Hygiene
- Teeth were cleaned by rinsing the mouth with vinegar and water.
- After this, they wiped each tooth with a piece of cloth.
- Tooth picks were used often.
- Oral hygiene was also used with honey to sweeten the taste.
- This caused rapid tooth decay.
Relieving Themselves
- There was no toilet paper.
- They used clumps of grass or hay.
- They did not have indoor toilets.
Sewage
- Sewage was thrown out of the windows of houses.
- This caused low hygiene and attracted flies, maggots, etc.
Medicine
- Many strange cures emerged
- Used natural ingredients because of the availability
- passed down through families
- Sweet country air was regarded as literally lifesaving- hence the rush out of the city, during times of the plague, by those who could afford to exit.
- Poor people relied on good willed people like churches to help cure them.
- "The establishment of the College of Physicians in 1518, the enactment of various regulations regarding medical practitioners, and the government's acceptance of responsibility for public health measures to prevent and combat the plague created a firm foundation upon which later centuries could build on," says Randolph Klein, the writer of the journal "The History of Medicine in Tudor Times: An Historiographical Survey."
- Back then, going into the medical field proposed three problems :
1. Who should write down the medical history? The historian or the doctor
2. Treatment resources
3. Limited people in the field
How the Plague Affected Shakespeare?
- Spring or Summer of 1596, Shakespeare got word that his son, Hamlet (11 years old) was ill.
- Chances were pretty high that he had the plague.
- Shakespeare was too caught up writing his plays to see him before he died.
Side Note:
Nutrition
- You may find this interesting, but people were actually very good about getting their nutrition in.
- It was important to them to have nutrition in their diet.
Soap
Thanks for listening!
Hesitancy
Hygiene at a Glance
The plague
Plague
Physicians
- The plague was very present in this time period
- It killed thousands and caused crazy statistics involving the age you would live to
- Many believed the plague was airborne.
- City dwellers passed through dense, reeking streets sniffing nosegays or stuffing their nostrils with cloves
- People burned scented candles and fuming pots to keep the city's pestilential stench at bay
- A private diary of a contemporary doctor shows that desperate spouses and parents, inconsolable with grief, were constantly coming to him for treatment.
- Used tobacco and dried toad when bleeding out the victim and arsenic for the disease
- Trained and licensed physicians were common.
- Barber surgeons were on the rise
- Folk remedies were widely employed
- William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood was a big turning point
- Medicine began to make some real scientific progress because of the common study of the human anatomy through the dissection of corpses
- English doctors studied abroad and brought home the latest continental discoveries
- Foreign physicians often came to protestant England to avoid religious persecution
- Plants were used to get drugs and other forms of medicine from
- Doctors were often gardeners with expertise in botany, particularly in herbs
- Alcohol was the common anesthetic
Well
Humours
- The people of the Elizabethan era believed that the human body was composed of humours which are the natural bodily fluids.
- They correspond to the elements and have various qualities: cold, dry, hot, and moist.
- Nature or complexion of anything is a combination of two of these humourous qualities
- When humours are all in balance in a person, they are healthy.
- If it gets out of balance in a person, illness results.
- Doctors bleed patients to restore balance.
- Blood is considered to have pre-eminence over the other humours.
- Bleeding is performed with a lancet and bowl, no leeches.
- Leeching is a separate operation
- Blood is drawn from foot or arm
- Liver is the source of emotion
- Heart is the source of love
- Stomach is the seat of courage
- Spleen is the source of anger