Medicine in Britain, c1500-c1700: Treatment, Prevention and the Great Plague of 1665
Treatment and prevention of disease in Renaissance Britain, c1500-c1700, still relied mainly on methods inherited from the medieval period: bloodletting and purging to rebalance the four humours, herbal remedies, and prayer. Surgery, however, did see real improvement: the French military surgeon Ambroise Pare, working in the mid-sixteenth century, found that tying off blood vessels with ligatures after an amputation, and treating gunshot wounds with a gentler ointment, caused far less pain and fewer deaths than the older practice of cauterising wounds with boiling oil. Prevention during outbreaks combined old ideas (burning sweet-smelling herbs to clear miasma, avoiding crowds) with the government's growing willingness to intervene, most visibly during the Great Plague of 1665, London's worst outbreak of bubonic plague since the Black Death. The government issued official Plague Orders: infected households were shut up and marked with a red cross for forty days, watchmen guarded sealed houses, and searchers of the dead recorded causes of death. Despite this more organised response, the true cause, the bacterium Yersinia pestis carried by fleas on rats, remained unknown, so none of these measures could reliably stop the disease from spreading.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Separate continuity in treatment (bloodletting, purging, herbal remedies) from change in surgery (Pare's ligatures) and from change in prevention (the government-issued Plague Orders of 1665) - the same period can show change and continuity depending on which aspect the question asks about.
- Learn Ambroise Pare's surgical improvements precisely: in the mid-sixteenth century he began using ligatures to tie off blood vessels after amputation, and a gentler wound ointment, instead of cauterising with boiling oil, reducing pain and deaths without any change in the underlying theory of disease.
- Learn what a Plague Order required in 1665: households with a plague victim were shut up (locked in) for forty days, marked with a red cross and the words 'Lord have mercy upon us', watched by a paid watchman, and had their dead recorded by an official searcher.
- Compare the Great Plague response with responses to the Black Death of 1348: both still used prayer, flight from towns by those who could afford it, and the burning of sweet-smelling substances against miasma, but 1665 added compulsory, government-enforced measures that medieval authorities had lacked the administrative power to impose.
- Learn that treatment for the sick changed very little: physicians still relied on bloodletting, purging and herbal remedies, and quack cures were widely sold, because the true bacterial cause of plague was not understood.
- For 'explain one way X was similar/different' questions, use the Great Plague as a concrete example of continuity (the same core theory of disease and the same core treatments) sitting alongside a concrete example of change (compulsory government quarantine measures).
- For 'explain why' questions, treat government and institutions as an explicit factor: explain how the growth of local administration and record-keeping gave seventeenth-century authorities tools medieval authorities did not have, even though the underlying science had not advanced.
- For a 16-mark judgement question on government's role, plan one supported paragraph showing real change (compulsory orders, quarantine, record-keeping) and one supported counterpoint showing continuity or limits (no understanding of the true cause, orders often unenforceable, treatment unchanged), then write a conclusion that weighs the two.
Worked example
Explain one way in which the response to the Great Plague of 1665 was different from the response to the Black Death of 1348-49.
- Choose a precise difference: the response to the Great Plague involved compulsory, government-enforced measures, while the response to the Black Death relied mainly on individual and religious actions.
- Support the Black Death side with detail: in 1348-49 people mainly turned to prayer, flagellation, flight from infected towns, and burning herbs against miasma, with little coordinated government action.
- Support the Great Plague side with detail: by 1665, the government issued formal Plague Orders, shutting up infected households for forty days, marking them with a red cross, and appointing paid watchmen and searchers of the dead to enforce and record this.
- State the difference clearly: seventeenth-century government had the administrative structures (parish officials, paid officers, written orders) to attempt an organised, compulsory response that thirteenth-century authorities lacked, even though neither period understood the true bacterial cause of the disease.
Practice questions
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Q1What treatment, inherited from medieval medicine, did physicians still commonly use in the period c1500-c1700?Show answer
Answer: Bloodletting and purging, to try to restore a balance of the four humours.
Q2What surgical improvement is the French surgeon Ambroise Pare associated with, in the mid-sixteenth century?Show answer
Answer: He began using ligatures to tie off blood vessels after amputation, and a gentler ointment for gunshot wounds, instead of the older practice of cauterising wounds with boiling oil, which reduced pain and deaths.
Q3In the Great Plague of 1665, for how many days was an infected household shut up under a Plague Order?Show answer
Answer: Forty days.
Q4What symbol was painted on the doors of houses shut up during the Great Plague?Show answer
Answer: A red cross, often with the words 'Lord have mercy upon us'.
Q5What was the job of a 'searcher of the dead' during the Great Plague?Show answer
Answer: To examine bodies and officially record the cause of death, so that outbreaks of plague could be tracked.
Q6What was the true cause of the plague, unknown to people at the time?Show answer
Answer: The bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas that lived on black rats.
Q7Why did the Great Plague response include more organised government measures than the Black Death response?Show answer
Answer: By 1665, parishes and local government kept better records and had more administrative structure and paid officials, giving authorities the means to enforce compulsory orders that medieval authorities had lacked.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a GCSE History exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Explain one way in which treatments for illness in Britain during the Great Plague of 1665 were similar to treatments used in medieval Britain, c1250-c1500.
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'Government action was the main reason the response to disease was different in 1665 compared with 1348.' How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer. You may use the Great Plague of 1665 and the Black Death of 1348-49 in your answer, as well as any other information you know.
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