Tudor medicine would you rather?

Tudor medicine would you rather?

Learn more about Tudor medicine with our fun would you rather quiz.

Would you rather?

Or a plague doctor

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Be treated by a barber-surgeon

Be treated by a barber-surgeon

Surgery would not be performed by a qualified surgeon like it is today. Instead you would go to the barber-surgeon. The barber-surgeon was not considered to be a doctor or a physician, instead he was working in a ‘trade’.

Be treated by a plague doctor

Plague doctors dressed in these strange outfit to protect themselves from the highly contagious plague.The cloak of waxed leather, the long gloves and boots, and the headdress covering their mouth and nose would have made it difficult for deadly fleas to find any skin to bite.However, plague doctors could also cause the spread of plague. Fleas could cling on to the outside of their clothes unnoticed and the plague doctor could end up spreading the plague further!

Would you rather?

Or drink your own wee?

Have you leg saw off with no pain relief?

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Have you leg saw off with no pain relief

There was no proper pain relief or antibiotics for patients undergoing surgery during Shakespeare’s time. Sometimes patients got really drunk before surgery so they would pass out before the surgeon started sawing. After the surgery was complete surgeons may have cauterized the wound to prevent infection and stop the bleeding. This would involve heating a piece of metal in the fire until it was red hot, then pressing the boiling metal onto the wound to ‘seal’ it. Although extremely painful for the patient, this would have stopped them bleeding to death and helped prevent infection.

Drink your own wee

If you lived 500 years ago and were feeling ill, you might send a servant with a flask of your urine (wee-wee) to the local physician (doctor).After looking, smelling and tasting the urine, the physician would use a Urine Chart to determine what was wrong with his patient.

Would you rather?

Or have your tooth pulled?

Have a bad haircut?

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Have a bad haircut

Surgery would not be performed by a qualified surgeon like it is today. Instead you would go to the barber-surgeon. Alongside cutting off patient’s limbs and other more complex operations like removing bladder stones, the barber-surgeon would have cut hair and shaved men's beards!

Have your tooth pulled

Most people hate going to the dentist, but 500 years ago it was much worse than it is today.Having a tooth removed was a very painful and dangerous process, as you can see from the expression on the patient’s face in this statue. As there was no proper pain relief or real understanding of the importance of cleanliness, barber-surgeons relied on alcohol and herbal potions to numb the pain and prevent infection.

Would you rather?

Or make up your own herbal remedy?

Visit an apothecary?

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Visit an apothecary

500 years ago, if you needed medicine you would visit an apothecary in an apothecary shop. He would make up prescriptions for patients from their physicians (doctors), as well as mixing up his own herbal remedies to sell. To help advertise all the exotic ingredients that an apothecary may use in his medicine, their shops would often have stuffed crocodiles and other exotic animals on display.

Make up your own herbal remedy

Physicians, apothecaries and wise women all relied on herbs, flowers and minerals for their remedies.When creating their herbal tonics and natural ointments they would use a pestle and mortar to crush the ingredients into a paste.In George Wateson’s 'A Rich Storehouse or Treasurie for the Diseased' for example, he recommends grinding together a selection of sweet smelling herbs (including lavender, chamomile and fennel) to relieve migraines and headaches.

Would you rather?

Or be chased by a dog?

Be bitten by a flea?

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Be bitten by a flea

According to 17th century science, the plague was spread by bad air so sweat smells like lavender an herbs could ward it off. We know now that the plague was spread by infected fleas jumping from rats to humans. The fleas would then bite their human victims and infect them with plague.

Chased by a dog

Tudor writer, George Wateson, offers ‘approved medicines’ to treat the plague.Some of his treatments, like removing bad air by placing sweet smelling herbs on the hot coals in the fire, are unlikely to have made any difference to patients suffering with the plague.However, George Wateson also recommends keeping streets and backyards clear of ‘standing puddles’ and ‘dung-hills’, as well as chasing away cats and dogs.George Wateson may not have known that it was fleas carrying the plague, but he did realise that cleaner conditions reduced the risk of infection. An idea that doctors today would still agree with!

After everything you have learnt, who would you rather be treated by?

A modern doctor?

A Tudor doctor