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"Science and Superstition"
...medicine in Elizabethan England was largely medieval mumbo-jumbo....Outlandish remedies were common. Powdered armadillo bone was supposed to cure deafness. A dead mouse, cut in half and placed on a wart, was supposed to remove it. Scrofula, a knotty tumor just under the skin, was called the "King's Evil," because it supposedly could be cured by a touch of a ruler's hand. ...
Most modern-day medicines were completely unknown. Although a few diseases were treated with chemicals such as mercury, zinc, and arsenic, these often did more harm than good. Natural treatments, such as herbs, were more popular, and sometimes worked, although doctors seldom knew why....
Doctors and city officials knew the plague was highly contagious, but had no idea how it was spread. The knew the bodies of the dead should be avoided, that their houses should be shut up, and that garbage should be burned. ... [but] They crowded around burial pits at funerals because they believed no one could be infected while attending a religious service. Some treated the plague by holding plucked chickens against the buboes (sores) to draw out the poison.
Surgeons ... were not considered doctors.
Source: Lace, William W. Elizabethan England. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1995. (942.05 Lac in the library)
Medical facilities within Muscovy were
virtually nonexistent. No established medical system existed and treatment was
based on folk remedies, herbal cures, or magic.
Ambrogio Contarini, Venetian
ambassador to Persia, transversed Russia. He treated a local sailor's abscessed
tooth with "a little oil, bread, and flour" and "in three days,
by good fortune, the abscess broke and he was cured." ...
Home remedies prescribed fungi or extracts made from them to treat wounds. Shell
fungi were used as a poultice. Fly agaric and false hellebore were common for
anti-mosquito and anti-lice, respectively.
In general, however, one survived through blind luck. In a society in which
service was for life, mutilation, serious wounds and death were the only grounds
for retirement.
Forks, lice and feasting / DON
MURRAY
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_murray/20041221.html
There were also other
tricky social questions. How to deal with lice, for example. In a society that
preferred to dress up rather than wash up, lice were constant companions. Their
presence could create social problems at crucial moments.
Let us remember the murder of Thomas à Becket, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, killed in his cathedral by agents of the King of
England, on a December night in the 12th century. To protect against the cold he
had been wearing no fewer than eight layers of clothes.
The faithful crowded into the church to pray for his soul
but, as the body grew cold, the lice living in the multiple layers of clothes
began crawling out. The chronicler records the scene: "The vermin boiled
over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate
weeping and laughter."
The manuals of etiquette had prescribed no proper behaviour
for such a problem. By the 16th century, however, there were rules laid down for
the gentry on how to deal with lice at the table. This is a report on the
education of a French princess: "One had carefully taught the young
princess that it was improper to take lice or fleas or other vermin by the neck
and kill them in company, except in the most intimate circles."
Parasites of Man
/ “Lice” / Stuart
M Bennett 2003
http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th5g.htm
...the old
"Biddy Rake" a specialist comb for removing head lice eggs (have a
look at the picture below when I was in my youth, 16th century) from your
hair...
LICE CAN BE NICE / http://www.monalisa-prod.com/vi/bank/bank_reportage_04.htm
A PERSISTENT LITTLE BEAST…
… Feeding on blood is vital to the louse: it partakes of several meals per day. On a human scale, the louse ingests 45 kg of blood each day, and it takes three hours to digest its meal. These bloody meals are painless for the host because the louse uses an anaesthetic; its teeth can tear flesh without causing pain.
Head lice do not transmit diseases, but represent a physical nuisance, because they cause itching. In general they are not found in great numbers on any single head, no more than a dozen, even though exceptional infestations of up to a thousand lice on one head have been recorded. In any case, thanks to their oversized pincers, these little creatures do not easily abandon their homes, hanging to the hairs as tightly as they can. …
BODY LICE, KILLER LICE
Whereas head
lice are inoffensive and responsible only for daily irritation, the case of
the body louse is very different, because it is a vector of disease.
All the great armies have been decimated by typhus, a disease transmitted to
humans by lice while [they] feed on their blood. …
Tobacco as a drug
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 267 No 7179 p911-936 /
22-29
December 2001 / By
W. A. Jackson
http://www.pjonline.com/Editorial/20011222/christmas/pipe.html
…tobacco had originally been introduced into Europe towards the end of the 16th century as a medicinal herb, and that in 1665–66 the boys at some schools were required to smoke a pipe a day as a prophylactic against disease.
In 'The pipe book', Alfred Dunhill quotes a French visitor in the second half of the 17th century as saying that smoking was a common habit in both men and women in England. They thought smoking tobacco was essential because it dissipated the evil humours of the brain. The mothers of schoolchildren used to send them to school with a pipe of tobacco in their satchels, and they smoked this instead of having breakfast. When it was time for a break books were laid aside, and both master and pupils would fill their pipes, with the master teaching the pupils how to hold their pipes and draw in the tobacco smoke, in the belief that it was absolutely necessary for the sake of their health.
Confirmation that apothecaries stocked both tobacco and pipes is provided by the inventory of the shop of Thomas Baskerville, an apothecary who was active in Exeter from 1560 and who died in 1595. The stock included two shillings worth of "Course" (sic) tobacco and twelvepennyworth of "Tabacco" (sic) pipes. In the shop inventory of Thomas Needham of Chesterfield (1665) we find "Virginy (sic) tobacco lb.30/Best tobacco 27lb/Spanish tobacco lb.5", as well "A Tobacco knife & press". It is interesting to note that, apart from some "Morters and pestills" (£4.10.0), the best tobacco (£3.10.0) and the "Virginy" tobacco (£3.3.0) were the most valuable items in the 14-page inventory. In fact the three lots of tobacco were worth £8.13.0 out of a total value of £180.8.9 for the shop's contents.
Tobacco had many medicinal uses. Smoking was said to stop catarrh, relieve weariness, suppress the "Fits of the Mother" and strengthen the stomach. It was a gentle laxative, and acted as a preservative in time of plague. If the green leaves were applied to the skin they would cure leprosy and the itch, kill lice, heal wounds, cleanse ulcers and take the fire out of scalds and burns. A gargle made from it cured toothache and tumour of the uvula. Alternatively toothache could be treated by using tobacco to stop a hollow tooth. An infusion of the green leaves in old Malaga would make a liniment for the palsy and an excellent salve for cuts, bruises, burns, gunshot wounds and the bites of venomous creatures could be prepared from the juice of green English tobacco, olive oil, turpentine, wax and verdigris. Finally, rectal injections of tobacco smoke eased colic and "Pains of the Belly" and cured "Fits of the Mother and Faintings". Tobacco was a remarkable and versatile drug!
Shakespeare's Dentist
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rayser3/dentist.txt
Dentistry in Shakespeare's time was a
very crude and disgusting art. Teeth
were ruined by the efforts to keep them clean.
They were rubbed with a mixture of powdered pumice stone, brick and
coral. This not only took off the
stain, but took off the enamel as well. Other
ways to clean teeth were to rinse them with a solution of honey and burnt salt,
sugar and honey, or a quart of vinegar and honey and half a quart of white wine
boiled together.
Going to the dentist could cost you your
life. People died of blood loss and
pain due to the instruments that they used.
These included pliers, keys with claws -- this dislocated the tooth from
the socket--, pelicans -- these dragged the tooth out sideways--, and an
instrument that pulled out the roots.
Bad breath was treated with water and
vinegar, then chewing masticke and washing the mouth out with a solution of
Annis seeds, mints, and cloves sodden in wine.
Also, by placing roasted turnip parings behind a person's ear, you could
rid him or her of bad breath.
During this time, fillings were also
used. The most common materials
were gold leaf, molten lead, or
silver scrapings. But usually if the tooth was bad, it was just removed and
"replaced" with a healthy one from someone else.
The "someone else" was a poor person needing money.
The dentist would pull one tooth after another to see which one would fit
his patient's mouth.
When the human supply of teeth went
down, the teeth of sheep, dogs, goats and baboons were used.
If these supplies went down, teeth from dead people and soldiers were
used.
Eventually, false teeth were used. These were made from hippopotamus bones, walrus ivory,
silver, mother-of pearl, enameled copper attached to an ivory base, porcelain
plaster, or vulcanite and celluloid, which was extremely flammable.
Then we saw the barber-surgeon and he taught us how to amputate an arm. He also told us about medicine in the Elizabethan age. The cure for toothache was to rub urine on the gum, if that didn’t work they knocked the tooth out using a hammer and chisel!