Essay/Term paper: Romeo and juliet: medicines used in the renaissance

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet: Medicines Used In The Renaissance


Romeo and Juliet both killed themselves with poison, although it was
not synthetic drugs. The poison had to be as powerful, some scholars believe
that it was hemlock that sealed the fate of the two start crossed love, other
are skeptical, but we will probably never know.

The methods and medicines used in Renaissance and Medieval times were
very primitive compared to today's standards. medical concepts were magical and
demoniacal. With no anesthetics, no knowledge of how the human body and it's
functions people many times would do anything they thought would help, not
necessarily what worked.


They to cure people from "evil" or the devil, people would literally
open up a person's skull and then massage the brain.

Wizards (alchemist) would mix potions, trying to find eternal life , and
cures to everything. For years these alchemists tried to find a way to change
lead into gold, they as you probably know never suceed.

Alchemists as crazy as they may seem to us were in reality the first
chemists discovering metals and mixing them etc.

Here's a poem about something that happen during the Renaissance:

Ring around the rosies,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes!
We all fall down.

For hundreds of years children sang this song not knowing the horrible
meaning behind it.

Song was written about the Bubonic Plague. Horrible living conditions
in the cities and town helped the "Black Plague" spread killing thousands and
greatly lowered the population of the world. It would cause glands to swell and
caused a horrible oder in it's victims.

There was not really a sanitation system in Elizabethan England garbage
was left in the street for days, rats would then get into the garbage and the
rats would then spread the plague rapidly and in one great wave swept across
the country side. No one was safe, but important religious officials like the
arch bishop of France were surrounding in fire for months.

Back to the meaning of the poem: The rosies refer to rosary beads to
gain divine help. The people with the plague emitted a putrid odor, so flowers
were carried to hide the smell. Ashes resulted from burning the corpses. Fall
down referred to dying people.

The theater was often thought of as a breeding ground for disease so
when the "Black Death" came in the a town the theater would be shut down for
long peroids of time.

Many inventoins were made to help the world's medical feild.