It was treated by red cloth being wrapped
around the person and put up to cover the windows; this promoted
healing without scarring. Gout was frequent. Syphilis was common
in London and other large centers, especially in Court circles. It
was ameliorated by mercury. An imbalance of the four humors:
blood, phlegm, choler, bile was redressed by blood-letting,
searing, draining, and/or purging. Heart trouble was not easily
diagnosed and cancer was not recognized as a life-threatening
disease. Childbirth was attended by physicians if the patient was
well-to-do or the case was serious. Otherwise women were attended
only by midwives. They often died in childbirth, many in their
twenties.
The theory of nutrition was still based on the four humors and
deficiency diseases were not understood as such. Physician William
Harvey, son of a yeoman, discovered the circulation of the blood
from heart to lungs to heart to body about 1617. He had studied
anatomy at Padua on the continent and received an M.D. there and
later at Cambridge. Then he accepted a position at the hospital of
St. Bartholomew to treat the poor who came there at least once a
week for a year. He agreed to give the poor full benefit of his
knowledge, to prescribe only such medicines as should do the poor
good without regard to the pecuniary interest of the apothecary
accompanying him, to take no reward from patients, and to render
account for any negligence on his part.
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