PREVENTION: change+continuity

• Prevention: change and continuity

  1. Preventing disease was still considered to be the best way to avoid dying from it

  2. Treatments had not moved on from medieval times, there was still no certainty that a person would recover

  3. The only sure way to avoid dying from a disease was not catching one at all
• Factors believed to prevent disease

  • Practising moderation in all things
  • Avoiding draughts
  • Avoiding exhaustion
  • Avoiding rich and fatty foods
  • Avoiding too much strong alcohol
  • Avoiding being too lazy
  • Condition at birth
• Constitution


  related to the medieval idea of a person's humours and personality being influenced by the season in which they were born
• Cleanliness


  1. Both the home and the body needed to be kept clean and free from bad smells. 2. Bathing had become a lot less fashionable in England since the arrival of syphilis.
• People were far more likely to keep themselves clean by rubbing themselves down with linen and changing their clothes regularly than by going to public baths
• Avoidance methods


  • Practising regimen sanitatis
  • By the end of the 17th century, avoidance methods were as much as changing your surroundings (moving away from an area with a disease) as they were about looking after yourself.
  • Measuring and recording weather conditions to see if there was a link between the weather and outbreaks of disease - new instruments like barometers and thermometers were used to measure and record weather conditions over a long period of time to see if there was a link between the weather and outbreaks of disease.
• More steps were now taken to remove miasmata from the air. Homeowners in English towns were fined for not cleaning the street outside their house. Projects were set up to drain swamps and bogs. Removing sewage and picking up rubbish from the streets was a punishment given to minor criminals.