Medicine During Shakespeare

Renaissance

Romeo and Juliet both killed themselves with poison, although it was  not

synthetic drugs. The poison had to be as powerful,  some scholars believe that  it was

hemlock that sealed the fate of the two start crossed love, other are skeptical, but

we will probably never know.

The methods and medicines used in Renaissance and Medieval times were

very primitive compared to today's standards. medical concepts were magical and

demoniacal. With no anesthetics, no knowledge of how the human body and it's

functions  people many times would do anything they thought would help, not

necessarily what worked.

They to cure people from "evil" or the devil, people would literally  open

up a person's skull and then massage the brain.

Wizards (alchemist) would mix potions, trying to find eternal life , and

cures  to everything. For years these alchemists tried to find a way to change lead

into gold, they as you probably know never suceed.

Alchemists as crazy as they may seem to us were in reality the first

chemists discovering metals and mixing them etc.

Here's a poem about  something that happen during the Renaissance:

Ring around the rosies,

     A pocket full of posies,

     Ashes, ashes!

     We all fall down.

For hundreds of years children sang this  song not knowing the horrible

meaning behind it.

Song was written about the Bubonic Plague. Horrible living conditions  in

the cities and town helped the "Black Plague" spread killing thousands and greatly

lowered the population of the world. It would cause glands to swell and caused a

horrible oder in it's victims.

There was not really a sanitation system in Elizabethan England  garbage

was left in the street for days, rats would then get into the garbage and the rats

would then spread the plague rapidly  and in one great wave swept across the

country side. No one was safe, but important religious officials like the arch bishop

of France were surrounding  in fire for months.

Back to the meaning of the poem: The rosies refer to rosary beads to gain

divine help. The people with the plague emitted a putrid odor, so flowers were

carried to hide the smell. Ashes resulted from burning the corpses. Fall down

referred to dying people.

The theater was often thought of as a breeding ground for disease so when

the "Black Death" came in the a town the theater would be shut down for long

peroids of time.

Many inventoins were made to help the world's medical feild.