Sickness in the Elizabethan EraCommon sicknesses such as the flu are very easy to spread in the rat infested, unhygienic society of London. Some sicknesses will spread easyily because of the crowded streets and have the ability to kill or affect the people of the Elizabethan era. These are the worst sicknesses that were possible.
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PlaguePlague was the most dreaded disease of Shakespeare's time. The plague was carried by fleas on the rats. Symptoms for the bubonic plague (50% chance of survival) would include : red, inflamed and swollen lymph nodes, called buboes, high fever, delirium, and convulsions. If the bacteria were to spread to the lungs (pneumonic), the victim were sure to die within hours.
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SmallpoxSmallpox is a virus that causes high fever, vomiting, excessive bleeding, and pus-filled scabs that leave deep pitted scars. Queen Elizabeth, 29 at the time, caught the virus but recovered and rendered her completely bald. The scars caused her to wear and extra coat of makeup to hide them.
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SyphilisSyphilis is a virus that causes raging fever, tortuous body aches, blindness, full body pustules, meningitis, insanity, and leaking heart valves, known today as aortic regurgitation. Theories suggest that the French or Spaniards were the ones who brought it upon them from America. Most popular names being the French pox, the Spanish sickness, the great pox, and simply, the pox.
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TyphusTyphus is a disease that caused high fever, delirium, and gangrenous sores. The typhus disease moved freely in rat infested London and would only take 1 minor cut for the bacteria to reach the bloodstream. It was though that the fever that Shakespeare obtained was from tychus, near his death
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