TUDOR MEDICINE AND DOCTORS
By Tim Lambert
In the 16th century many people died in epidemics of sweating sickness (possibly influenza). Many others died of smallpox. (Queen Elizabeth I almost died of it. However she was given the most advanced medical treatment for smallpox -she was wrapped in red cloth.) Even if you survived smallpox it could leave you disfigured with pox marks or blind. Syphilis was also rampant. Dysentery was also a killer and many women died in childbirth (usually because of infection). Doctors were very expensive and they could do little about illness partly because they did not know what caused disease. They had little idea of how the human body worked. Doctors thought the body was made up of four fluids or 'humours'. They were blood, phlegm, choler or yellow bile and melancholy or black bile. In a healthy person all four humours were balanced but if you had too much of one you fell ill. If you had too much blood you would be bled either with leeches or by cutting a vein. Too much of other humours would be treated either by eating the right diet or by purging (taking medicines to cause vomiting or diarrhoea). Doctors also fought infectious disease, like plague, was caused by poisonous 'vapours', which drifted through the air and were absorbed through the skin. One of the main ways of diagnosing sickness was uroscopy (examining urine) by its appearance, its smell or even by its taste! It is often said that Tudor surgeons did not use anaesthetics. That is not quite true. They did have opium and hemlock. However both of them were very dangerous. The wrong dose could kill and Tudor doctors had only a vague idea about correct dosages. Many surgeons refused to use these substances because they were too dangerous. Astrology also played a part in Tudor medicine. Most doctors believed that different zodiacal signs ruled different parts of the body. Since doctors were so expensive many people went to see a wise woman if they were ill. The wise women would have a great knowledge of different herbs and their properties and might be able to help. Unfortunately many Tudor folk-cures were absurd e.g. a treatment for gout was goat's grease with saffron. Actual operations were performed by a barber-surgeon. He was the barber, the surgeon and the dentist combined. Barber-surgeons had lower status than doctors. Lower still were the apothecaries who made up medicines. The average life span in the 16th century was shorter than today. Average life expectancy at birth was only 35. That does not mean that people dropped dead when they reached that age! Instead many of the people born died while they were still children. Out of all people born between one third and one half died before the age of about 16. However if you could survive to your mid-teens you would probably live to your 50s or early 60s. Even in Tudor times some people did live to their 70s or 80s.