1. Plague and Medical Myths

2. Myth and Superstitions
There were many myths and superstitions about health and hygiene as there still are today. People believed for example, that disease was spread by bad odors.
It was also assumed that disease of the body resulted from sins of the soul
Many people sought relief from their illness through mediation, prayer, pilgrimages, and other nonmedical methods.

3. *Fire: yellow bile or choler *Water: Phlegm *Earth: Black bile
Four Humors
The body was viewed as part of the universe, a concept derived from the Greeks and Romans. Four humors or body fluids were directly related to the four elements
*Fire: yellow bile or choler
*Water: Phlegm
*Earth: Black bile
*Air: Blood
These four humors had to be balanced. Too much of one was thought to cause a change in personality– for example, too much black bile could create melancholy (sadness/depression)

4. Medical treatment
Medical treatment was available mainly to the wealthy, and those living in villages rarely had to the help of doctors, who practiced mostly in the cities. Remedies were often herbal in nature, but also included ground earthworms, urine, and animal excrement.

5. Match Treatments with Conditions
Touch of the hand of a hanged man
Rinse the mouth with an infusion of poppies
Apply treacle a mixture including opium and roast viper flesh
Treat with juice of willow leaves
Rub them with a piece of meat. Bury the meat. When it rots they will disappear.
Making a small cut, letting the blood of the patient
Allow leaches to suck the blood from the patient
Toothache
Snakebite
Warts
Fever
Goiter (swelling of thyroid gland)
Tiredness
Nausea

6. Fun facts
The bite of a leech is painless due to its own anesthetic. The leech will drink your blood until it has had enough and then it will fall off. It can consume up to five times its own body weight.
Physicians studied medicine at universities but their methods were hit and miss and very expensive. Few people would have been able to afford to visit them so most went to apothecaries or wise women.
When a barber finished surgery he took the bloody bandage and wrapped it around a pole to show he did surgery too. This is how the red and white swirled barber pole came to be.

7. Flea drinks rat blood that carries the bacteria.
Disease Cycle
Flea drinks rat blood that carries the bacteria.
Bacteria multiply in flea’s gut.
Human is infected
Flea bites human and regurgitates blood into human wound.
Flea’s gut clogged with bacteria.

8. symptoms
Painful swelling called buboes in the lymph nodes, purplish black spots on skin, and extremely high fever, chills, delirium, and in most cases death.

9. Trade declined and prices rose
Effects
Town populations fell
Less work force leads us into the Columbian Exchange and Triangular Trade (Slavery)
Trade declined and prices rose
Serfs left the manor in search of better wages
Church suffered a loss of prestige when its prayers failed to stop the plague
Estimated 55 million + dead