Medicine During the Elizabethan Era Essay -- Alchemy History Historica

Medicine During the Elizabethan EraThe medicinal practices and problems of the Elizabethan Era were very important to the people, although they are very various from those of today. There were many different beliefs and diseases, kindred the Plague. Medicine was not an exact science and was related to interpersonal chemistry (Chemistry). Here, some of the many practices and beliefs of the Elizabethan Era will be discussed.One of the about widely known and important of the beliefs was the humours. It was believed that every living creature was composed of four elements, the humours. They were blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and melancholy (or black bile). It was believed that the overall total combining of these four elements determined the persons characteristics. For example, a person with much blood than other humours was hot and wet in their nature, a person with more phlegm was cold and wet, a person with more choler was hot and dry, and a person with melancholy being the dominant humour was cold and dry. It was in any case believed that too much of a certain humour caused disease. That meant the removing or avoiding the dominant humour could cure any disease. Removal could be done by take in corresponding foods. For example, if a person was phlegmatic in nature, that meant that he was cold and wet, he could be cured if he ate hot and dry foods. Medicines like pepper, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, watercress, and mustard would be useful to such a person. A fever, which was believed to have been caused by excess blood, could have been cured in two instructions. One way was to eat cold and dry food, and the other was to have excess blood sucked out by leeches.Another of the many popular beliefs was that every living liaison put on Earth by god was for human use. He gave humans control over his creatures. All of them had certain roles, as food, medicine, etc. For example, kine were put on Earth to supply people with meat and milk, and wheat was the re to supply bread. Everything on Earth was useful to humans.Medicine in the Elizabethan Era was associated with many sciences. One of these includes Astrology. It was believed that all living creatures were associated with the stars. It was possible to read a persons past, present and future by the positions of the stars and planets. Therefore, if you were to go to a physician, one of the offset things he would ask you wa... ...help. They could go to any of those and get help and people used all of these choices, but the amount of money they could spend limited their choices, as some practitioners charged for their help. But if a person didnt have a lot of money, he still had many choices available. Almost every partnership had at least one of each type of practitioner.Medicine was very important to Elizabethan England and was used widely. It played a major part in the life expectancy of people and was widely studied. It was one of the most important sciences of that era and sti ll is today.BibliographyRamsey, Lia. Medical Beliefs and Practices. Elizabethan England. Springfield Public School District. .McLean, Adam. Articles. The Alchemy Website. 1995. .Chamberlin, E.R. Everyday Life in Renaissance Times. London B.T. Batsford LTD, 1967.Andrews, John F. William Shakespeare His World, His Work, His Influence. Canada Collier MacMillian, 1985.Alchemy. The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. New York Columbia University Press, 200104. .Trimble, Russell, Alchemy, in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal emended by Gordon Stein (Buffalo, N.Y. Prometheus Books, 1996), pp. 1-8.