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Modern medicine is very different from medicine that was used hundreds of years ago because we now have a better idea of what causes illnesses and therefore how better to treat them. Now we know about germs and the importance of keeping clean, but since the decline of the Romans and their ideas on public health, people have lived in horrendous conditions, which helped the spread of disease.
Read below a section of the official enquiry into the conditions in Llangollen in 1853 after an outbreak of scarlet fever and smallpox. It is no wonder that illness was rife in Llangollen at this time.
‘I found in the front living room of a house in Factory Square having 6 inmates, a pigstye containing 3 pigs. It was in the nook between the chimney & the wall and was ½ yard deep in manure….In another house in Church St I found a horse in the cellar under the living room where a sick person was bedridden, there was a huge accumulation of dung & filth in the cellar stable.’
‘The narrow town streets were mere open drains upon which the refuse and filth of the houses was deposited. In the streets where the privies were scarce, they were frequently used as privies as well as dumping ground for the refuse of the pigs.’ – DD/DM/927/182
The Public Health Act of 1848 began the improvement of conditions in towns and therefore helped to prevent the spread of disease, but it was not until germs were identified by Louis Pasteur in the late 1800s that illnesses could really be prevented and cured. Before this discovery, most had superstitious beliefs about the cause of illnesses.
A common belief was that the human body was like the planets, made up of four elements: air, fire, water, and earth. These four elements were connected to four bodily fluids (the four humours): blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile, which had to be in balance for good health. Therefore, to cure a sick person, one of the ‘humours’ would be extracted to restore the balance, using such methods as leeches to suck blood.
Some thought illness was a punishment from God and therefore would use prayer or pilgrimage as a cure. In the time of the Black Death (14th century) some went as far as whipping themselves to show how sorry they were for their sins.
Medicines that were used were often folk/herbal remedies and although these sometimes helped, they often contained ingredients that did nothing or even made things worse!
Click on the PDF at the bottom of the page to view a page from a 19th century chemist’s prescription book. See if you can read the ingredients for the medicines (and household solutions). Do any of the ingredients seem odd? Why do you think soap and treacle are ingredients in the ‘Cheap pills for Quacks’ (a quack was a person who pretended to be a doctor)? Can you find ‘Dragon’s blood’? What do you think it is? And is the stain some of it that was spilt on the book?!
Click on the ‘Transcription’ PDF at the bottom of the page to help you with any words you have difficulty reading and for an explanation of some of the ingredients.
After germs were discovered, medicines that worked were quickly identified and put into use. Some diseases were wiped out as a result, such as smallpox. Others became much rarer, such as tuberculosis, and others no longer such killers, such as measles. Nowadays, we think little of taking medicine for illnesses and since the 20th century there have been many to choose from, leading to competition between medicine providers.
The image on this page is an advert for a still popular medicine brand from The North Wales Guardian, 1922 (DD/G/1999). I wonder if these are the same ‘Beecham’s pills’ that are on sale today? Can you think of other medicine brands? If so, do you think they have been producing medicine for many years? And do you think that medicine has changed much since it was first produced?
Medicine is constantly changing and developing: from the superstitious treatments and remedies used in the past, to the scientifically proven ones of today, and even to new and better ones in the future (many diseases still do not have cures and some of those that do are becoming immune to some medicine); and so the history of medicine continues.
For more information on the history of medicine, follow the links on this page.
(pdf, 378.66 KB)