Living conditions

• • People's living conditions continued to affect their health in the early modern.
  • Range and quality of people's food depended on their wealth
  • Access to water supplied improved for some people, water was not very safe for anyone to drink, rich or poor
• Food: The wealthy

  • Had a more varied diet than the poor
  • Diet included: lots of meat(such as beef, veal, mutton, rabbit and pigeon), fish, vegetables, fruit, alcohol(wine, ale, beer and mead) all of which were safer to drink than water
  • Ate new foods imported from Asia and America(chillies, pumpkins)
  • Ate more sugar- Led to rotten of teeth and obesity
  • Used sugar in hot chocolate, coffee and tea
  • Had an unbalanced diet- many suffered from Gout(type of arthritis)
• Food: The poor

  • More basic diet
  • Had not really changed since medieval times
  • Diet included: Bread, vegetables, occasional treats(eggs cheese, fish or meat)
  • Poorest labourers mainly ate pottage(thick vegetable soup)
  • Low wages meant they endured periods of hunger during bad harvest when food prices increased
  • Famines occurred less, but when they did occur, families starved
• Water: Hygiene

  • People didn't wash their hand regularly
  • Soap made of animal fat
  • People believed dirty water could get in their pores and make them ill
  • People living in countryside bathed in the local river or pond
  • In towns bathing was difficult unless you had servants or a bathtub
  • Wealthy had lots of clothes and servants to wash them- hygienic
  • Poor might only have one set of clothes, which could be affected by lice and fleas
• Water: Drinking water

  • Those in the countryside had wells, spring, streams
  • In towns, people could collect water from a conduit(small fountain) or buy water from a water seller
  • Some towns started to bring in water from the countryside to reservoir- Meant that people could pay for their house to be connected to water pipes