Sanitation and Plagues of Elizabeth?s England :: essays research papers fc

In Elizabethan times, living conditions of an everyday townsman was quite indecent. Elizabethans lived in houses that were extremely close to mavin other, which do it quite easy to disregard such a fatality to keep the streets and living surroundings clean.     People threw all of the godforsaken removed of their windows, which included, their feces, dead cats and dogs, and also kitchen waste. Eventually, when it would rain, the rain would wash all of the rancid waste into local waters. There were regulations against populate washing clothes in or near waters used for drink, or against washing the entrails of beasts after slaughter(Rowse 156). it is evident from innumerable documents how frequently they were broken (Rowse 156). As recollective as people lived in small groups, isolated from each other, in that location were not many incidents of widespread disease. But as civilization progressed, people began clustering into cities. As the cities grew an d became crowded, they also became the nesting places of water-borne, insect-borne, and skin-to-skin infectious diseases. The Elizabethans shared communal water, handled uncouth food, stepped in excrement from casual discharge of manure, and used urine for dyes, bleaches, and plain treatment of wounds.      As A.L. Rowse mentions, many of the citizens possessed chamber pots, ordinarily made of tin, or close stools. The close stools were put in the cockloft, the sleeping billet of the Elizabethans. This would obviously reek of horrible odors and force the townsmen to dump them as curtly as possible into the slimy cobblestone streets.     Many rats and rodents flocked to the littered streets, purpose morsels of anything that would satisfy their hunger. This is where the transportation of the plague would come to play. As the rodents feasted on the waste, the plague-infested fleas would bounce to the nearest passerby. The most devastating to England was the bubonic plague. Also known as, "The down(p) Death", because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and medieval medicine had nothing to combat it(Rice). capital of the United Kingdom was afflicted over a dozen times during the 1500s (Miller and Orr). Winters were usually mild, allowing the rats and rodents, which carried fleas to stay active throughout the winter months.          Typhus febrility is another disease born of bad sanitation. It is also known as, "jail fever" or "ship fever," because it was so common among men held captive in such putrid surroundings. The disease was highly contagious and usually hereditary through human feces and lice that infested the unclean bodies of the Elizabethans.