London's Medicine
Chinese people had been using plants for medicinal purposes for 4500 years and some of these had been brought to Europe. Many domestic plants, such as foxglove and marshmellow, were also used to cure illnesses. As well as these, doctors believed in the power of powders said to be made from strange ingredients such as horn from the mythical unicorn, and bezoar stone, which was claimed to be the tears of a stag turned to stone. Live worms, fox lungs (for asthma), spiders' webs, swallows' nests and the skulls of executed criminals were also highly sought after ingredients. Leeches are a type of slug-like worm, which were used during this time to reduce blood pressure and cleanse the blood. A leech was placed on the skin to consume four times its own weight in blood, which the toxins in the blood would be sucked out. In England, herbal treatment reached its peak of popularity with the publication of the Herbal of Nicholas Culpeper (1616–54), a book also called the English Physician. Culpeper linked each plant or herb with a sign of the zodiac, and although his theory is not believed now, many plants he described and illustrated really did help to cure illnesses. The herb wintergreen, for example, contains salicin, a natural form of the painkiller aspirin. Some advances in medicine came about through treating soldiers and sailors on the battlefield. A Frenchman named Ambroise Pare discovered that the best way to treat a wound was not to put boiling oil on it, as had previously been the practice, but instead to apply a cold lotion made of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine. New drugs which became popular included tobacco, coffee, tea, and chocolate: all of them were first used as medicines! The church in medieval times forbade dissection, the cutting open of dead bodies. This made it difficult for doctors to learn about the working of the human body. However, in 1543, a surgeon called Vesalius of Brussels published his own illustrated medical manual called The Fabric of the Human Body. This was the result of his own secret dissections, and the illustrations were so accurate that it became a very important guide for doctors and surgeons. Even so, progress was slow and many people had to suffer horrible 'cures' and medicines. In the 1620s an Englishman named William Harvey, who had studied at the great Italian medical school in Padua, discovered that blood circulates around the body, the heart acting as a pump with valves to control the flow. King Charles I encouraged Harvey's efforts after seeing his work. King Charles II, who came to the throne in 1660 after the death of Cromwell, was also interested in everything scientific, including medicine.