Plagues3

Answer prepared by: Luisa P. **
 * WHAT PLAGUES STRUCK ENGLAND AROUND THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE? HOW WERE THE PLAGUES DEALT WITH? WHAT EFFECTS DID THE PLAGUE HAVE?

In the times of Shakespeare, plagues like the Great Plague, which took 68,596 lives, were very common. The Great Plague of 1665 was the last and most famous of its periodic outbreaks. Also, the bubonic plague struck, which was carried by fleas that lived in the city rats. The bubonic plague kills two-thirds of those infected, the majority being men and children.

The year of Elizabeth's coronation was a bad plague year, nearly a quarter of London's population died in the year 1563. From then, the bacilus //Yersinia pestis// attacked about every four years until 1582. Also, to take a deeper look at the infamous bubonic plague, there were two other bubonic plague forms: septiceamic and the pneumonic plague, which is the deadliest of all. This illness spreads from person to person via breath. It is carried by the flea //Xenopsylla cheopis// and its mortality rate is near 100%.

Health conditions in Elizabethan England were terrible. People had a very low life expectancy of 35 for the rich and 25 for the lower statuesque. The main cause of this being the poor sanitary conditions that Elizabethans lived in. People tended to throw their waste through the window of their house towards the street. The city was filled with rats and disease. Smallpox was also a big killer. Queen Elizabeth got infected and was almost killed by it. Her face ended up with pockmarks and she took on the thick white makeup that ended up killing her years later. Children and the poor were especially at risk of this disease.

Elizabethans tried to address the plague issue. By regulations of 1568, any house where a plague patient lived was to be isolated for a period of 20-30 days with the sufferer and the family inside. A red cross was painted in the front door to warn people to stay away, and nobody could get in or out. Also, all the clothes and bedding used by the infected person were to be burned, and when someone was let out of the isolated house, they had to carry a white stick measuring a yard long to warn people on the streets to stay away. It was hard for poor households to burn the infected person's clothes since they looked forward to wear them for years after their death. Also, all stray dogs and cats were to be killed, which made the plague worse since there were no cats to eat the rats who carried the infection, and no swine were to be kept in the city. The mayor also declared that the streets and other places in the city were to be cleaned every other day, which was definitely an extreme measure. The isolation hospitals that were originally used to keep lepers were reopen and put to work. Those were the best options Elizabethans had to stop disease.

"Elizabethan England Medicine." //Elizabethan England Life//. N.p., ND. Web. 8 Apr 2010. .
 * Works Cited **

Picard, Liza. //Elizabeth's London, Everyday Life in Elizabethan London.// London, England: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2003. p.91-93. Print.

Singman, Jeffrey L. //Daily Life in Elizabethan England.// Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1995. p. 4-5, 52. Print.