3. Syphilis
Syphilis, one of the deadliest of all venereal diseases, spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 15th century. A current theory on the origin of the outbreak argues that Spaniards carried the disease home from the Americas in 1493. Elizabethans had many names for this foul malady; the most popular being the French pox, the Spanish sickness, the great pox, and simply, the pox.
Without antibiotics, Elizabethans would have experienced the full effects of syphilis, which included raging fever (referred to as "burnt blood"), tortuous body aches, blindness, full body pustules, meningitis, insanity, and leaking heart valves, known today as aortic regurgitation. According to a document written in 1585 by the famed Elizabethan barber-surgeon William Clowes, the victims of syphilis were so numerous that London hospitals had no room for the "infinite multitude."
Interestingly, Shakespeare’s most famous mention of disease – "A plague on both your houses!" (Romeo and Juliet) – was, in the original printing of the play (the first quarto), "A pox of your houses" (3.1.60).
Shakespeare mentions syphilis often in his work and in Timon of Athens he alludes to the calamitous Elizabethan treatment of syphilis: the inhalation of vaporized mercury salts:
Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.4. Typhus
Make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves.
For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheeked youth.
To the tub-fast and the diet. (4.3)
Epidemics of louse-borne typhus ravaged London several times during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Crowded, filthy conditions and a near total lack of bathing made room for body lice, which, when scratched, would defecate on a person’s skin. It would take just one minor cut or sore for the typhus infected feces to enter the victim’s bloodstream, and soon high fever, delirium, and gangrenous sores would develop.
The disease was a huge problem among prisoners. The poor wretches, most of them beggars, drunks, petty thieves and pamphleteers, who found themselves in the Newgate jail, would typically die before they could serve their full sentences. Shakespeare felt their pain:
If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the gaols and let out the prisoners. (2 Henry VI, 4.3.15)Although we will likely never know what really caused Shakespeare's own death, a serious outbreak of typhus in 1616 lends credibility to the story that he succumbed to a fever.
5. Malaria
Known to the Elizabethans as ague, Malaria was a common malady spread by the mosquitoes in the marshy Thames. The swampy theatre district of Southwark was always at risk. King James I had it; so too did Shakespeare’s friend, Michael Drayton. Without antimalarial medications, many Londoners would have experienced dreadful symptoms, including fever, unbearable chills, vomiting, enlarged liver, low blood pressure, seizures, and coma.
Shakespeare’s characters speak often of ague. A common belief was that the sun spread the fever by sucking up the vapors from the marshes. In The Tempest, Caliban describes the process while cursing Prospero:
All the infections that the sun sucks upSo too does Hotspur in 1 Henry IV:
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease!
(2.2)
Worse than the sun in March,
This praise doth nourish agues. (4.1)
The facts are mind-boggling, especially when you consider that London's population hovered around a mere 150,000 during Shakespeare's lifetime. It is little wonder that the average life expectancy was 35 years.
References
Adams, Simon. Elizabeth I : the outcast who became England's queen. Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, 2005.
Bell, Walter George. The great plague in London . London : Folio Society, 2001.
Bradbrook, M. C. Shakespeare, the poet in his world. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978.
Picard, Liza. Elizabeth's London. London: Phoenix Press, 2003.
Singman, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Elizabethan England. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995.
