Public Health in the Renaissance and the English Civil Wars

There were some attempts to improve public health during the Renaissance. Some towns employed people to pick up rubbish in the streets and people could be fined for not keeping the street outside their house clean. ‘Miasma’ (bad air) was still believed to cause disease and so bonfires were lit to clean the air. From the reign of Henry VIII, towns began to build sewers, but these were expensive and not widespread. As many people moved to the towns and cities, this put pressure on waste disposal and access to water. It became difficult to keep towns and cities clean. Many people continued to keep livestock and slaughterhouses within town boundaries.

During the English Civil Wars, the arrival of an army to a town or city made the problems of overcrowding and pressure on clean food and drink even worse. Soldiers often brought plague with them, which then spread amongst the local population. Other conditions such as typhus also spread quickly amongst troops who lived closely alongside each other in large numbers. When on campaign, most soldiers camped out in the open. Lying on cold, hard ground in all weathers, lowered soldiers’ resistance to illness. More soldiers died from disease than from the fighting during the Civil Wars.

Richard Elks wrote a short book for soldiers on health and hygiene in an army. In it he recorded simple but effective measures that soldiers could use to prevent themselves getting sick:

…when you rest at your fires sit not upon the cold ground, but upon wood, straw, or such like; put off your wet clothes, and especially your stockings and dry them, etc. And carry in your knapsack a piece of steel to heat red hot, and quench it in your beer, water or milk, and as you travel gather the leaves and bark of the oak, and the leaves of the blackthorn, a bag of salt and oatmeal, that if the flux [diarrhea] should take you, you might help yourself.