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Personal hygiene is poor by modern standards (people rarely wash) and most medicines are simply unavailable. This means that common illnesses such as a variety of fevers (often called 'the sweats') can turn nasty, and that epidemics of plague and smallpox often have devastating effects. Local herbal remedies may bring relief, but can't stop outbreaks of infectious diseases. Bloodletting – cutting veins or using leeches – remains the standard treatment for all ills. Food Food takes up to four-fifths of an ordinary family's budget. Despite ways of treating food, such as salting meat and fish, diet is generally rather basic: hunks of bread, coarse hard cheese, occasional meat and fish. At an aristocrat's banquet, you can sample anything from elaborately cooked roast pheasant to suckling pig (always in enormous quantities). Tea, coffee and chocolate become known after 1650, but at first only the rich can afford them. Do not drink water – unless you buy it from one of London's 4,000 water carriers, it's bound to harbour disease. Drink beer – or the less alcoholic 'small beer' – instead. Most taverns provide meals, but quality varies. Milk is not considered an adult drink. Famine remains a hazard, especially in remote country areas that depend on small markets for food. About one harvest in six fails. Shortages often lead to riots and looting. But things get better as the century progresses – the last major famine affects north England and Scotland in 1623, and Scotland experiences its last one in the 1690s. Fire Fire is an ever-present danger. Buildings with thatched roofs and wooden chimney tops, the use of candles for light and the absence of safety matches all create hazardous conditions. As agricultural writer Thomas Tusser says, 'Fear candle, good wife.' Nor is the danger constant. Some towns – such as Tiverton, Marlborough and Dorchester – keep burning down; others are never touched by fire. By 1640, tobacco leaf is the biggest commodity to be imported to London, and is smoked in pipes everywhere – another fire risk. So common are fires that most people accept them with barely a shrug. Mind your possessions By the early 17th century, the combined effects of population growth – probably due to fewer outbreaks of contagious diseases – and inflation fuelled by gold imported from the wider world lead to people leaving the countryside and coming to London. This results in overcrowding and a rise in crime. |
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