Feeling you r way
Visiting the surgeon could prove a real pain
T
he darkness we encountered in the
visual world discussed on page 24
explains why Elizabethans rely on their
sense of touch far more than we do in
the modern world. In short, they often
cannot see where they are going. Hence
finding objects, moving from room
to room or even making a visit to the
outhouse is much more a matter of
touch than sight.
Another variation in feeling relates to
the things with which people surround
themselves. Clothes vary hugely in
texture, from very fine linen to coarse
canvas. At the top end of society the
finest fabrics, such as silk, lawn and
velvet, provide a much greater range of
soft tactile sensations than the textiles
available to those at the bottom, who
have to make do with canvas, buckram,
worsted, serge, bays and linsey-wolsey.
The same is true for bed linen and
bedding. Fine holland sheets and two
or three ‘feather beds’ (ie feather
mattresses) on a slung bed with
down-filled pillows are a luxury far
beyond the reach of most labourers’
families. They have to get by with straw
mattresses on boards, with canvas
sheets and a wooden headrest.
The cleanliness of the bedding will
also be something you feel: vermin
such as body lice, bed bugs and fleasget everywhere, and you can be sure of
not feeling the biting and itching only
if you have new bedding on a new
mattress.
There is also the perennial problem
of how to keep warm. This is not to be
underestimated, especially during a
harsh Elizabethan winter (such as that
of 1564 – 65). Firewood is scarce and
expensive, and coal used only for
industrial work, so fires are not left
burning in every room. Many bed
chambers have no fireplaces at all, and
most windows are without glass. Even
when shuttered, cold draughts get in
and out. Gentlemen’s houses normally
have just one or two fires burning
through the day.
The only way to be sure of keeping
warm is to wear lots of layers and to
keep active. It is no wonder that the
elderly do not last long. For the old,
and especially the aged poor, winters
are deadly.
We feel pain in all ages, but in
extreme situations we want to have
some way of controlling it. Opiates
are available to Elizabethan surgeons,
but they are expensive. If you have
to have part of a limb removed, the
operation will normally be done
without any painkiller better than
copious amounts of alcohol – wine if
you can afford it, beer if you cannot.
The flesh is cut with a sharp knife.
After that, the surgeon saws through the
bone – you have to hope he cuts through
the nerve quickly to prevent it from
being shredded in the teeth of the saw.
As for toothache, you could go to a
tooth-drawer. He will use an iron
‘pelican’ to solve the problem. This has
a hook that goes under the tooth
on the tongue side; the
supporting side goes on the
outside of the mouth. He then
yanks out the tooth by means
of a long handle. If that doesn’t
appeal, you could always ask
for help from your local
blacksmith, who will do the
same thing with his pliers.you can afford to build a copy of Sir John
Harington’s flushing loo. Moreover, if
you and 20 other family members and
neighbours are sharing a single cesspit, it
will need emptying regularly. The cost of
removing a few tonnes of excrement,
kitchen waste and menstrual cloths can
be high – £2 4s in 1575, the equivalent of
132 days’ work for a labourer. So the
poor don’t have their own cesspits but
instead use common sewers and public
latrines. If you’re too poor to eat, the last
thing you want is the additional cost of
getting rid of detritus and faeces.
This woodcut shows
a surgeon performing
an amputation in
the 16th centuryTOPFOTO/BRITISHLIBRARY/GETTYIMAGES