In Sickness and in Health – Part Two

 

The seventeenth century had medical men and women of all sorts, to suit all conditions and most purses. There were some who were licensed, some not, and some who probably should not have been. There were physicians, all university men; surgeons (or as it was spelt then ‘chirugeons’) who had been trained through an apprenticeship to perform basic surgery, treat injuries and set bones; apothecaries who dispensed drugs to physicians and also attended patients independently; and barber-surgeons, with practical skills in bone-setting, blood-letting and treating minor injuries, but who were men of little learning and generally held in low regard.  Finally there were midwives, who learned ‘on the job’ and were licensed by the Diocese on the recommendation of ‘six honest matrons’, their minister and a churchwarden.  Rich people could shop around and choose a practitioner of their liking, inside or outside the town, as most covered a wide area. The poor, as always, made do.

In fact, the practitioners who called themselves ‘physicians’ in Hythe were not university men at all, but only licensed surgeons or barber-surgeons. The terminology was loosely applied, and by the end of the century the word ‘doctor’ was generally applied to all medical men.

They offered different services and treatments. Arnold Hall seems to have specialised in providing remedial diets to patients, and also employed nurses to attend the sick. Between 1626 and 1642 he built up an extensive practice covering the Romney Marsh, Cheriton, Alkham and as far afield as Sittingbourne. William Stace, a barber-surgeon at about the same time, let blood and prescribed poultices and potions. When the blacksmith John Gately was taken ill at Rye in 1625, it was Stace he summoned from Hythe to treat him (unsuccessfully as it turned out).  James Arthur was licensed as a surgeon in 1635, over the objections of Arnold Hall. Whether the objections were on professional grounds or whether he thought one surgeon in Hythe was enough is not recorded. Arthur practised in the town for nearly fifty years, finding time also to serve as jurat, mayor and churchwarden. Sick people then, as now, sought second opinions. Elias Bassett, during his last illness in 1684, was treated by both James Arthur and Richard Jacob.

Medical men prescribed a range of treatments, nearly all thankfully unfamiliar today. Blood-letting and purges were very popular. So were poultices. In the 1630s, John Hall, Shakespeare’s son-in-law, described how he treated a man with gout: he applied a poultice of mallows, a fomentation of frogspawn and a plaster and purged him with senna powder. One must assume that the placebo effect was at work if any of these treatments relieved the condition.

Medicines were often herbal in origin, perhaps with the addition of opium, and often infused in an alcoholic beverage.  Brandy, port wine, beer, cider and ale were all popular, and spices and sweeteners were added for taste and smell. Fumigants were prescribed to banish noxious miasmas. One such, said to drive out plague, was a concoction of brimstone, saltpetre and amber which was ground and burned. The stench may well have been successful in driving rats out of the house, to say nothing of the inmates.

One Hythe surgeon, John Grove, had a most unfortunate record of prescribing.  In 1595, two years after he was licensed, he admitted to a court purging Anne Pierce, a widow, with two ounces of diacatholicon, two ounces of diafinicon, and one ounce each of electuarum rosarum and confectio hamech. Each of these mysterious-sounding compounds was a powerful purgative in its own right, and between them they contained antimony, wormwood, prunes, rhubarb root and senna.  One medical book of the time suggests six drams, or about a third of an ounce of confectio hamech alone as a purgative to cure any one or all of leprosy, madness, ringworm or scabies.   The dose prescribed by Grove was probably enough to purge an elephant, and if the unfortunate patient did not die, she would certainly have been very ill indeed.

Grove’s defence, used by schoolboys across the ages, was that he only did it once. The court took a dim view, said he was ignorant and audacious, fined him five pounds and imprisoned him – but did not remove his licence. He practised thereafter in Hythe, where as surgeon, gentleman, jurat and mayor, he achieved respectability.

Happily, physicians were starting to take a more scientific and empirical approach to investigating the workings of the human body. In 1628, William Harvey, who had been born in Folkestone, just down the road from Hythe, described for the first time the circulation of the blood. Not everyone believed him, though. He said that his medical practice dropped off after his publication because people thought he was mad.

A Walk through Hythe in 1600 – Part Six

The road westward peters out into the countryside, and you retrace your steps a little back towards the bridge. Do not cross it, but walk on a little way along the track on the south side of the town ditch. In front of you is a horse pond, and next to that the town’s bowling green.  Here the yeomen, having refreshed themselves at the inns, are now gathering, while their mounts drink at the pond.  Bowling is a respectable and popular pastime, and the yeomen are joined by tradesmen who have finished work early today, and by two or three gentlemen of the town.  Their wives, their marketing finished, arrive in ones and twos to watch the match, which in summer always follows the market.  The gentlemen’s wives sport real farthingales, not the bum rolls of their humbler cousins. These contraptions of wire or whalebone are wheel-shaped: the woman’s waist forms the hub of the wheel, which has a slight tilt behind. The skirts spread out over this at right-angles to the body then fall straight to the ground. The gentlemen are in suits of clothes, with matching or toning breeches and doublets; their shirts and ruffs are of fine cloth, and spotless and their stockings of the finest wool and in the brightest shades. This is an age when manly ostentation is positively encouraged.

The term ‘gentleman’ is fairly loosely applied and lacks a clear definition, and in any case, small towns tend to inflate honours and the title of ‘gentleman’ here  probable has little validity in the wider world. The likes of William Knight and Arthur Blechinden, who have some land which they do not physically work themselves and live in big houses with servants, and call themselves gentlemen, would in London just be two more country bumpkins.  John Grove describes himself as both a physician and a gentleman. The awkward facts of his conviction for malpractice and subsequent imprisonment do not quite sit comfortably with your own notions of gentlemanly behaviour.

You tire of the game and see that there is a track leading away southwards towards the sea. Take this now. A lot of the land here, once under water, has been ‘inned’ and sheep graze on the acres of grassland.  The salty soil on which the grass grows is supposed to give the mutton a particularly fine flavour.

The way follows the path of a narrow waterway, which flows down to what remains of the haven.  Over to your left is a windmill, built by Reignold Robyns, the husband of Alice Robyns, the haberdasher you saw earlier. She is saving the proceeds of her business to enable her to lease back from the corporation the land on which the mill stands. She is a clever woman and will ensure that both her daughters have a title to the land for life.

You reach now the sorry remains of a once prosperous haven. It used to be a thriving harbour, with warships, merchant men and fishing vessels sheltering from the open sea, but it has been silting up for the last hundred or more years. It is not alone, and the once thriving ports of Romney, Rye and Sandwich suffer the same fate.  The haven at Hythe was cut out and repaired only a few years ago, and at present, is just about hanging on as a going concern

You wander along the shingle beach towards some signs of activity. You will not find any sunbathers or families picnicking on this beach, or anyone taking a dip. The notion of the seaside holiday, like that of the weekend, is far in the future.  The sea is regarded as intrinsically alien and highly dangerous. Charts show that the sea, even quite close to land, is infested with strange and ferocious monsters and the burial registers at St Leonard’s record the deaths of those who were foolish enough to ’venture into the sea’. In fact, this would make a very unpleasant bathing beach, as it is used as a rubbish tip by the inhabitants of the town, which is quite sensible, as most of the detritus is swept out to sea by the tide.

The activity you have noticed is the solution to the lack of a decent haven, for the fishermen, at least. Some poor nags known as sea horses are turning capstans to haul a fishing boat, the ‘Marygold’ from the water onto the open beach. This landing place is called the stade, and its existence ensures that fishing continues to flourish in Hythe despite the decline of other commercial markets. Next to the stade are a few store houses where nets and fishing tackle are stored, and occasionally other goods, intended for illegal exportation.  Smuggling is a locally sanctioned way of supplementing income, and now that you have seen what poverty means in the seventeenth century, you may be inclined to believe that it is a perfectly valid alternative to penury.

The ‘Marygold’ has been fishing conger in home waters, and its load must be quickly processed to get it fresh to the London markets, so the boat owner’s entire family, from the youngest to the oldest are here to do the work.  This is the only boat on the stade at present. Most of the larger vessels have headed north to catch cod and ling off Scarborough, but as you look out to sea you spot another vessel approaching. It is a three masted square-rigged ship, of about three to four tons, a collier from Newcastle bringing coal to the town. It has been spotted from the town, too, and men and boys on wagons are coming to unload it, to take coal to Guy Wilmot, John Oldfield, John Gately, the bakers, the tallow chandlers, the malsters, and all the other tradesmen who will ensure that Hythe, though struggling, will not sink.

Your imaginary walk has finished. The next post will deal with historical facts and what really happened to the poor in Hythe