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In the mid 1300s life was much different that it is today. There was no such thing as a "germ" to people. They had not yet been discovered. So then what did people think was killing them? Well ultimately they thought it was an act of God that made someone fatally ill. Although that was the common belief some doctors at the time had a theory of four fluids. The theory stated that the body had four different types of fluid in it and if they became unbalanced someone would contract a disease. Although we know all of those people became sick as part of God's plan he did not make them sick out of spite. The fact that germs were an unknown assassin and the close proximity ended one third of the total English lives.

The image below is a common picture associated with death because the man in the bird mask is a representation of the plague and the death that came with it.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/health-and-medicine-in-medieval-england/

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Toothache- They would take a candle and burn it close to the tooth then hold a cup by your moth and the worms gnawing on the tooth will fall out into the cup.
Evil Spirits in the head- They used a technique called trepanning. What this is, is when they would cut a whole in the persons skull to let out all the evil spirits. The would also cut out the 'infected' part of the brain.
General illness- They would build a pilgrimage to a holy shrine to show their love of God and this was told would heal them of any sickness they had.
Blood letting- What they did here was when they would drain blood out of a certain spot ion a persons body. It released all the bad blood from your body.
Cauterisation- This was when they would tell you about the illness you have and then they would cure you by putting red hot pokers on your back.
Astrology- This was used to cure many things. They would look to the stars and the moon and the suns position. That would tell them how to cure a person and what they had. They believed this really worked.

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Citation: C N Trueman "Health and Medicine in Medieval England"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 5 Mar 2015. 27 Feb 2018.

Health and medicine in Medieval England were very important aspects of life. For many peasants in Medieval England, disease and poor health were part of their daily life and medicines were both basic and often useless. Towns and cities were filthy and knowledge of hygiene was non-existent. The Black Death was to kill two thirds of England's population between 1348 and 1350.

In 1349, Edward III complained to the Lord Mayor of London that the streets of the city were filthy:

No one knew what caused diseases then. There was no knowledge of germs. Medieval peasants had been taught by the church that any illness was a punishment from God for sinful behaviour. Therefore, any illness was self-imposed - the result of an individual's behaviour.

Other theories put forward for diseases included "humours". It was believed that the body had four humours (fluids in our bodies) and if these became unbalanced you got ill. Doctors studied a patient's urine to detect if there was any unbalance.

Astronomers blamed the planets going out of line

As important, no-one knew how diseases spread - the fact that people lived so close together in both villages and towns meant that contagious diseases could be rampant when they appeared; as happened with the Black Death.

Physicians were seen as skilled people but their work was based on a very poor knowledge of the human anatomy. Experiments on dead bodies were unheard of in Medieval England and strictly forbidden. Physicians charged for their services and only the rich could afford them. Their cures could be bizarre though some cures, including bleeding and the use of herbs, had some logic to them even if it was very much a hit-or-miss approach. One of the most famous physicians was John Arderne who wrote " The Art of Medicine " and who treated royalty. He was considered a master in his field but his cure for kidney stones was a hot plaster smeared with honey and pigeon dung!

Physicians would have had their own ideas as to what caused illnesses.

Those who blamed bad smells developed a 'cure' to make the bad smells go away.

Those who blamed bad luck would use prayers and superstitions.

Those who blamed the body's four humours used bleeding, sweating and vomiting to restore the balance of the four humours.

When by some luck, a patient got better or simply improved, this was a sure sign that a cure worked. It also meant that the cure used would be used again. If it did not work on the next patient, this was the fault of the patient rather than of the cure.

Operations were carried out by 'surgeons'. In fact, these men were unskilled and had other jobs such as butchers and barbers. The traditional red and white pole outside of a barber's shop today is a throwback to the days in Medieval England when barbers did operations. The red stood for blood and the white for the bandages used at the end of an operation.

Operations could end in death as post-operative infections were common. Instruments used in an operation were not sterilised - as there was no knowledge of germs, there was no need to clean instruments used in operations. Patients might recover from small operations, such as a tooth extraction (though this could not be guaranteed), but operations that included a deep cut through the skin were very dangerous.

Some monasteries had cottage hospitals attached to them. The monks who worked in these hospitals had basic medical knowledge but they were probably the best qualified people in the country to help the poor and those who could not afford their own physician. By 1200, there may have been as many as 400 hospitals in England.

Take a candle and burn it close to the tooth. The worms that are gnawing the tooth will fall out into a cup of water held by the mouth.

The cause of the Black Death according to Guy de Chauliac, a French doctor:

Three great planets, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, are all in close position. This took place in 1345. Such a coming together of planets is always a sign of wonderful, terrible or violent things to come.

For evil spirits in the head:

For this, surgeons used trepanning. This was where a surgeon cut a hole into the skull to release evil spirits trapped in the brain. The operation might also include cutting out the part of the brain that had been 'infected' with these evil spirits. Incredibly, people are known to have survived operations such as these as skulls have been found which show bone growth around the hole cut by a surgeon - a sign that someone did survive such an operation if only for awhile.

People were told that a pilgrimage to a holy shrine to show your love of God would cure them of illnesses especially if they had some holy water sold at the place of pilgrimage. After the death of Thomas Becket in 1170, Canterbury Cathedral became a place of pilgrimage which brought even more wealth to the city. However, more people coming to the city also increased the risk of disease being brought in.

This was when blood was drained from a certain spot in your body. The idea behind this was similar to trepanning in that it released bad blood from your body. The use of leeches was common for this but dirty knives were also used which only increased the risk to the patient.
Leeches used on royalty
This was where a physician identified that a certain part of your body was ill and it was cured by having red hot pokers put on it.

Astrology played an important part in many cures. For fever, one medicine book stated "A man suffering from fever should be bled immediately the moon passes through the middle of the sign of Gemini."

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Health and Medicine in Medieval England - History Learning Site

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Health and medicine in Medieval England were very important aspects of life. For many peasants in Medieval England, disease and poor health were part of their daily life and medicines were both basic and often useless. Towns and cities were filthy and knowledge of hygiene was non-existent.

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One of the biggest diseases at this time was smallpox, it was right up there with the plague. Smallpox causes high fever, vomiting, excessive bleeding, and pus-filled scabs that leave deep pitted scars. Smallpox is a contagious, disfiguring and often deadly disease that has affected humans for thousands of years. The first symptoms of smallpox usually appear 10 to 14 days after you're infected. During the incubation period of seven to 17 days, you look and feel healthy and can't infect others.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/smallpox/symptoms-causes/syc-20353027

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The black death (Black Plaque) has been one of the most deadly diseases that has been spreading throughout Europe in the 1300's. The disease has killed between 75-200 million people. This widespread disease has been one of the worst illnesses that has happened in history. The symptoms you could have is coughing, wheezing, and so much pain. Right now in the U.S. it's extremely rare to catch, but only 10 people gets affected by it every year. The dangerous disease occurs when the bacteria spreads so the body comes in contact with fleas. People normally gets from animals or insects's bites/stings.

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Medicine has drastically changed over the years it has been around. We have learned how to make it better and what works and what doesn't. For most people in the 1300's they weren't able to have the access to medicine. Diseases and sickness were a big part of their lives. Medicines were often basic and useless to them. The reason why they were sick so much was because of the fact that it was often very dirty and hygiene was not one of the things they thought about. They knew they needed to come up with something in order to cure people. They had bad diseases and sicknesses in these times.They used the things they had to help people because medicine was not yet thought of. It was starting to become almost impossible to help people. They then started to use things to make medicines such as; herbs, spices and resins. They started to turn what they had made into many different things that the people could use.

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If you think about the doctors that we have now, compared to the doctors they had back then, you can definitely tell that they have definitely changed and upgraded. They didn't know how to handle the diseases that they had back then because there wasn't as many schooling options much less none to go to. They also didn't have the tools  or medicines that people needed. It is a little surprise that the plague was the number one disease of Shakespeare's time. Carried by fleas living on the fur of rats, the plague swept through London in 1563, 1578-9, 1582, 1592-3, and 1603. The outbreaks in 1563 and 1603 were the most ferocious, each wiping out over one quarter of London's population. Thank goodness that we have the tools and knowledge that we have today.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/londondisease.html

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Bovey, Alixe. "Medicine, diagnosis and treatment in the Middle Ages." The Middle
Ages, 30 Apr. 2015, www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/
medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

Trueman, C. N. "Health and Medicine in Medieval England." The History Learning
Site, 5 Mar. 2015, www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/
health-and-medicine-in-medieval-england/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

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Doctors at the time of the black death believed that a person's health was directly tied to the four humors and if they were out of balance that could pose a threat to a person's body.This falsehood had been believed since ancient times. If physicians diagnosed people with a humor imbalance they would perform risky procedures such as bloodletting. Most of the medicine of the time was based on speculation if old time doctors. The medicine that was meant to help people, such as the bloodletting made them much weaker and more susceptible to a disease because their body was weak and could not fight the disease. The cause was not helped by the fact that most of the medical knowledge was restricted to monasteries and those of a higher education than the common man. This drive peasants to the medicine that was found in folk tales and experience with the infected people in the past.

https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages

The picture below shows a doctor using the technique of bloodletting which was meant to purge diseases from someones body.