Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Miscellaneous Frantmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The medicalisation of East Kent
- 2 The medicalisation of central southern England
- 3 The availability and nature of medical assistance
- 4 Medical practices
- 5 The nature and availability of nursing care
- 6 Plague and smallpox
- Conclusion
- Appendix Medical indices for East Kent, West Sussex, Berkshire and Wiltshire
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Plague and smallpox
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Miscellaneous Frantmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The medicalisation of East Kent
- 2 The medicalisation of central southern England
- 3 The availability and nature of medical assistance
- 4 Medical practices
- 5 The nature and availability of nursing care
- 6 Plague and smallpox
- Conclusion
- Appendix Medical indices for East Kent, West Sussex, Berkshire and Wiltshire
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘for watching at the doores of the said deceaseds house to notifye the disease with Intent by god's blessing to preserve others from the infection’.
It is both a truism and a regrettable limitation that very few specific diseases are mentioned in these accounts, and so it remains inevitable that what is charted in this book is an increasingly medicalised response to illness in general, with no sensitivity to which specific diseases or ailments were perceived to be treatable, and thus to which medical and social issues were perhaps driving change. However, it is possible to distinguish certain types of medical condition. In particular, plague and smallpox are often specified as the cause of death, or the reason why extensive and expensive nursing care was purchased. This chapter will therefore seek to answer a specific question: is there any evidence that medical responses to plague and smallpox were different from those to other sicknessess?
The key problem is lack of knowledge: there is simply no information on how many people suffered from either of these illnesses. Although it is possible to say that 10 per cent of all Status B males in East Kent are recorded as paying for medical assistance in the period 1600–19, it is impossible to establish how many of those suffered from plague. It would be possible to say how many accounts which mention plague also include medical or nursing assistance, but since the main reason for mentioning plague is to justify medical or nursing expenditure, this would not be a valid way of measuring the comparative use of external assistance in respect of plague.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dying and the DoctorsThe Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 190 - 203Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009