Romeo and Juliet both killed themselves with poison, although it was not synthetic drugs. The poison had to be powerful. Some scholars believe that it was hemlock that sealed the fate of the two star-crossed lovers. Others are skeptical, but we will probably never know. The methods and medicines used in Renaissance and Medieval times were primitive compared to today’s standards. Medical concepts were magical and demoniacal. With no anesthetics and no knowledge of how the human body and its functions work, people would often do anything they thought would help, not necessarily what worked. To cure people from evil” or the devil, people would literally open up a person’s skull and massage the brain.
Wizards, or alchemists, would mix potions in an attempt to find eternal life and cures for everything. For years, these alchemists tried to find a way to change lead into gold, but as you probably know, they never succeeded. Despite seeming crazy to us, alchemists were actually the first chemists, discovering and mixing metals, among other things. Here’s a poem about something that happened during the Renaissance:
Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes! We all fall down. For hundreds of years, children sang this song without knowing the horrible meaning behind it.
The song was written about the Bubonic Plague. Horrible living conditions in the cities and towns helped the Black Plague” spread, killing thousands and greatly lowering the world’s population. It would cause glands to swell and a horrible odor in its victims. There was not really a sanitation system in Elizabethan England. Garbage was left in the street for days, and rats would then get into the garbage, spreading the plague rapidly. In one great wave, it swept across the countryside. No one was safe, but important religious officials like the archbishop of France were surrounded in fire for months.
Back to the meaning of the poem: The rosies” refer to rosary beads to gain divine help. The people with the plague emitted a putrid odor, so flowers were carried to hide the smell. Ashes resulted from burning the corpses. “Fall down” referred to dying people. The theater was often thought of as a breeding ground for disease, so when the “Black Death” came to a town, the theater would be shut down for long periods of time. Many inventions were made to help the world’s medical field.
