"Bring out your dead!"
The death cart was an unfortunate necessity for dealing with the sheer number of people who had fallen victim to this terrible disease. In the 1600s, the death cart was as common as the rubbish truck that drives past your house every week. Sadly (a bit like our own bin men in snow at Christmas time), it took a while for them to be collected. Before that, dead bodies were just thrown out into the street and left rotting in the middle of the road. Nowadays we can’t imagine doing this, can we? Then the doctors of the times said the bodies should be left in the houses, instead of in the street, where anyone walking past could catch the disease. Then the death cart was established. It would pass by with the call ‘Bring out your dead’ and the poor relatives would bring out the bodies of their loved ones and place them on the cart.
What else did we English do to cope with the plague? What medicine was used at the time, and how exactly did people think the plague was being passed from human to human?
As we mentioned before, the first action was to keep sick people locked inside their houses, but loads more initiatives were formed to fight the disease.
The Privy Council (close advisors of the King) recommended closing all of the public areas where people would be close contact with each other and could catch the plague, such as market places. The crowded streets of London needed to be cleared. Next, it was decided to kill all the dogs and cats of London, because it was suspected these were disease carriers. However, this slaughter actually did more harm than good, because it was actually the rats that mostly carried the plague, and with all the dogs and cats gone, the rats were now free to roam about and spread the disease even further.
Knowledge of science and medicine was not as developed as now, but there were many theories. The Miasma theory of disease was put forward by the brightest minds of the time, and it stated that disease was spread by bad smells. Given the fact that the streets were overflowing with sewage and rubbish, the theory wasn’t that ridiculous. It made sense. At the time, no one knew about the bacteria and viruses that were causing the infection. So one way to deal with the plague at the time was to wear sweet smelling flowers and carry handkerchiefs to prevent inhaling bad smells.
In 1665, a book was written by the Royal College of Physicians. It had a very long title: Royal College of Physicians of London. Certain necessary directions as well for the cure of the plague, as for preventing the infection :with many easie medicines of small charge, very profitable to His Majesties subjects. London: Printed by John Bill and Christopher Barker, 1665.
It’s a really interesting read if you want to learn more about how the great minds of the time approached the plague. (Just remember that during the time, s and f were interchangable. (In case you don't understand words like Majefties, Lordfhips and moft requifite)).
The directions in the book included the following:
~ six or four doctors at least, who may apply themselves to cure the infected. Each would have their own team to help.
~ persons and goods that came from foreign lands would be in isolation for forty days to prevent further diseases.
~ slaughterhouses should also be closed because they are 'offensive' (smell-wise ... no vegetarianism here!)
~ A house known to be infected must be watched in order to make sure no one escapes and wanders the streets.
~ fires could be burned to purify the air
~ the nosegays or handkerchiefs that people carried must be held "a little in their mouths as they go in the streets" and anointed with oil for their noses.
Whether or not any of these measures were in any way successful is doubtful. Remember that all of the qualified doctors left London, which left the unqualified volunteers to do the job for them.
NEXT TIME: Important Victims of the Plague
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Monday, 31 May 2010
Monday, 25 January 2010
Sir Christopher Wren
Hang on a minute. Who did she say?
‘Christopher Wren? The guy that built St Paul’s Cathedral?’
Last month I mentioned Sir Christopher Wren briefly when I wrote a blog entry about The Monument to The Great Fire of London. Now we will talk about him in a bit more detail.
Sir Christopher Wren has been immortalised in St Paul’s Cathedral, which was completed in 1710. His eldest son, Christopher Wren Jr., placed an inscription in his crypt that says: “LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE.” This roughly translates to: “If you seek his memorial, look around you” - a fantastic idea to place inside Wren’s amazing work.
Born on October 20th 1632 into an Anglican family, Wren went from being schooled from home, to studying at Oxford University. Although he began as a student of Latin, he soon began to show talents for maths and the sciences, including anatomy, physics and astronomy. From here he moved into architecture. In 1662 he became one of the founding fathers of The Royal Society, which was dedicated to the sciences, and would also eventually become Surveyor-General of the King’s Works.
Wren was commissioned to work on re-building London after the Great Fire in 1666 working on, among others, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Monument to the Great Fire of London, The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, The Royal Hospital at Chelsea and the library at Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Windsor Guildhall is also interesting in that it shows Wren’s wry sense of humour and slightly stubborn nature. While building the Guildhall’s open space (later to house corn markets), Wren’s clients in Windsor were adamant that four pillars be included for safety. Wren tried to convince them that the pillars not needed, but the client’s view prevailed and Wren placed four pillars in the middle. However, to prove that he was right, he left a gap between the roof and the pillars, so that the don’t do anything but look nice. They definitely don’t hold up the roof!
‘Christopher Wren? The guy that built St Paul’s Cathedral?’
Last month I mentioned Sir Christopher Wren briefly when I wrote a blog entry about The Monument to The Great Fire of London. Now we will talk about him in a bit more detail.
Sir Christopher Wren has been immortalised in St Paul’s Cathedral, which was completed in 1710. His eldest son, Christopher Wren Jr., placed an inscription in his crypt that says: “LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE.” This roughly translates to: “If you seek his memorial, look around you” - a fantastic idea to place inside Wren’s amazing work.
Born on October 20th 1632 into an Anglican family, Wren went from being schooled from home, to studying at Oxford University. Although he began as a student of Latin, he soon began to show talents for maths and the sciences, including anatomy, physics and astronomy. From here he moved into architecture. In 1662 he became one of the founding fathers of The Royal Society, which was dedicated to the sciences, and would also eventually become Surveyor-General of the King’s Works.
Wren was commissioned to work on re-building London after the Great Fire in 1666 working on, among others, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Monument to the Great Fire of London, The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, The Royal Hospital at Chelsea and the library at Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Windsor Guildhall is also interesting in that it shows Wren’s wry sense of humour and slightly stubborn nature. While building the Guildhall’s open space (later to house corn markets), Wren’s clients in Windsor were adamant that four pillars be included for safety. Wren tried to convince them that the pillars not needed, but the client’s view prevailed and Wren placed four pillars in the middle. However, to prove that he was right, he left a gap between the roof and the pillars, so that the don’t do anything but look nice. They definitely don’t hold up the roof!
Monday, 18 January 2010
Sir Isaac Newton
Mama and Papa don’t seem to think much of Mr Newton. ‘The man is full of all sorts of nonsense about science.’
Another science post ladies and gentlemen. I have always talked about what an important subject it is and today we will be looking at Sir Isaac Newton.
Today is also a very important day concerning Sir Isaac Newton because the Royal Society have published the manuscripts of his life, by physician and biographer William Stukeley, including the events of that very famous apple that changed the way that we looked at the world. I wanted to put a quote from the manuscripts on here but the Royal Society website is jam packed with so many visitors that I cannot even get onto it. It looks like everyone wants to know the story.
But let us move on and talk about the man himself.
A Cambridge graduate, Isaac Newton is known by most as the one who sat under a tree and discovered gravity just because an apple fell down. There was a lot more to him than that, we seem to know the anecdote and not the science. What he questioned was not just how objects on earth were pulled down to the ground. Instead, what if this had extended to the universe as well? Like the moon, the planets and Earth itself.
What Newton brought to the world of science are things that you have learned about in school. Does the formula F=MA ring a bell? It should. According to Newton there were three laws of motion. We shall put them simply.
1) All objects will stay stationary, or at a constant speed, if extra force is not applied to it
2) The acceleration of an object is dependent on the mass of the object and the amount of force that is being applied to it, and can be calculated with the formula F=MA
3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
You will have witnessed the third law in what is properly known as Newton’s cradle. Have you ever seen those five pendulums in a metal frame, where if you swing one ball on one side then the exact same one of the other side will be forced to move as well and they both go back and forth? That is Newton’s third law in action.
Optics was very important as well. It is because of him that we understand how a prism can disperse a beam of white light into a spectrum of different colours.
What you may not know is that Newton was a man of religion as well. He spent a lot of time studying the Bible and credited some of the more amazing aspects of the world to a divine being. Although he was born into an Anglican family he did not share the same views on religion and God as his peers, of course he kept a lot of this a secret.
He became a fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1671 and President in 1703. He was also a Warden of the Royal Mint, where he would investigate counterfeit coins – a crime punishable by being hanged drawn and quartered.
Another science post ladies and gentlemen. I have always talked about what an important subject it is and today we will be looking at Sir Isaac Newton.
Today is also a very important day concerning Sir Isaac Newton because the Royal Society have published the manuscripts of his life, by physician and biographer William Stukeley, including the events of that very famous apple that changed the way that we looked at the world. I wanted to put a quote from the manuscripts on here but the Royal Society website is jam packed with so many visitors that I cannot even get onto it. It looks like everyone wants to know the story.
But let us move on and talk about the man himself.
A Cambridge graduate, Isaac Newton is known by most as the one who sat under a tree and discovered gravity just because an apple fell down. There was a lot more to him than that, we seem to know the anecdote and not the science. What he questioned was not just how objects on earth were pulled down to the ground. Instead, what if this had extended to the universe as well? Like the moon, the planets and Earth itself.
What Newton brought to the world of science are things that you have learned about in school. Does the formula F=MA ring a bell? It should. According to Newton there were three laws of motion. We shall put them simply.
1) All objects will stay stationary, or at a constant speed, if extra force is not applied to it
2) The acceleration of an object is dependent on the mass of the object and the amount of force that is being applied to it, and can be calculated with the formula F=MA
3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
You will have witnessed the third law in what is properly known as Newton’s cradle. Have you ever seen those five pendulums in a metal frame, where if you swing one ball on one side then the exact same one of the other side will be forced to move as well and they both go back and forth? That is Newton’s third law in action.
Optics was very important as well. It is because of him that we understand how a prism can disperse a beam of white light into a spectrum of different colours.
What you may not know is that Newton was a man of religion as well. He spent a lot of time studying the Bible and credited some of the more amazing aspects of the world to a divine being. Although he was born into an Anglican family he did not share the same views on religion and God as his peers, of course he kept a lot of this a secret.
He became a fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1671 and President in 1703. He was also a Warden of the Royal Mint, where he would investigate counterfeit coins – a crime punishable by being hanged drawn and quartered.
Monday, 7 December 2009
'Another death last night, I hear,’ mumbles Mrs Malik, pointing at The Monument.
'Death?'
'Jumped right off the top she did. Suitor ran away with another. Always the same old story.'
The Monument to the Great Fire of London was built between 1671 and 1677, to commemorate the fire that broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane just after midnight on 2nd September 1666. The flames spread throughout London over four days, finally ending on the fifth. By then many houses, streets, and even churches had been destroyed.
As the capital was rebuilt, it was important to commemorate the memory of those who lost their lives. Sir Christopher Wren (talented architect, astronomer, and mathematician) and colleague Robert Hooke (another architect and all-round intellectual whose revolutionary work had a big impact in mathematics, chemistry and physics) provided a design for a column to be built in the middle of London. Thus The Monument was placed at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, towering over London at 202 feet.
Overall, six people committed suicide by jumping off the top of The Monument. If you look at the official website for The Monument you will see they included two bakers, a diamond merchant and a servant girl.
It was not until the sixth death that the tower was closed to visitors while a gate was built around the top so that no more of these incidents took place. As Picky quite rightly noted, "The whole thing is closed in now, so there is no way you can leap off in my London."
The Monument was not all doom and gloom however.
During the 17th Century, the world was enjoying a scientific revolution, which had begun hundreds of years previously. Religion and faith were being replaced by the reason and proof of science. Great strides in maths, physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy were being made. It was a very exciting time in history.
Because The Monument was built by Hooke and Wren, it was only natural that it would be used for scientific purposes as well, or more specifically, astronomy. Hooke and Wren were both members of the Royal Society so needed somewhere to perform experiments for which a great height was required, and 202 feet worked perfectly. Scientists had discovered that we were not the centre of the universe, so astronomers wanted to see what else was out there. The Monument worked as a giant telescope so astronomers could use it to observe the skies directly above them – this type of telescope is known as a 'Zenith Telescope'. A laboratory was also set up at the bottom of the tower where experiments took place.
So all in all, The Monument is a much more interesting site than even Picky could have imagined, suicides and all.
'Death?'
'Jumped right off the top she did. Suitor ran away with another. Always the same old story.'
The Monument to the Great Fire of London was built between 1671 and 1677, to commemorate the fire that broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane just after midnight on 2nd September 1666. The flames spread throughout London over four days, finally ending on the fifth. By then many houses, streets, and even churches had been destroyed.
As the capital was rebuilt, it was important to commemorate the memory of those who lost their lives. Sir Christopher Wren (talented architect, astronomer, and mathematician) and colleague Robert Hooke (another architect and all-round intellectual whose revolutionary work had a big impact in mathematics, chemistry and physics) provided a design for a column to be built in the middle of London. Thus The Monument was placed at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, towering over London at 202 feet.
Overall, six people committed suicide by jumping off the top of The Monument. If you look at the official website for The Monument you will see they included two bakers, a diamond merchant and a servant girl.
It was not until the sixth death that the tower was closed to visitors while a gate was built around the top so that no more of these incidents took place. As Picky quite rightly noted, "The whole thing is closed in now, so there is no way you can leap off in my London."
The Monument was not all doom and gloom however.
During the 17th Century, the world was enjoying a scientific revolution, which had begun hundreds of years previously. Religion and faith were being replaced by the reason and proof of science. Great strides in maths, physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy were being made. It was a very exciting time in history.
Because The Monument was built by Hooke and Wren, it was only natural that it would be used for scientific purposes as well, or more specifically, astronomy. Hooke and Wren were both members of the Royal Society so needed somewhere to perform experiments for which a great height was required, and 202 feet worked perfectly. Scientists had discovered that we were not the centre of the universe, so astronomers wanted to see what else was out there. The Monument worked as a giant telescope so astronomers could use it to observe the skies directly above them – this type of telescope is known as a 'Zenith Telescope'. A laboratory was also set up at the bottom of the tower where experiments took place.
So all in all, The Monument is a much more interesting site than even Picky could have imagined, suicides and all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
