Superstitions In Elizabethan England Essay

During the Elizabethan times, superstitions and folk tales were very popular and were spread all throughout England, and impacted almost everything. Life, sickness, and many beliefs were affected by superstitions that branched from other ideas. For example, astrology and medicine helped construct many of these beliefs. In some ways the church also had an impact because church affected how the common people reacted to these ideas. A religious church man would talk down upon superstitions opposed to an individual who is open minded to the ideas. This was normal during this time, to have such a controversial topic be embedded into the minds of the common citizen in England. Despite the fact that superstitions were controversial to the church,

This means that a person’s health has been affected by the movement of a certain planet. Andrews explains, “Because they also believed that the stars’ movements directly affected the humors, they often considered a patient’s horoscope when making a diagnosis” (Andrews 79). Depending on the horoscope of an individual, it was believed that, it could be the cause of sicknesses. It was also believed that evil spirits inflicted mental diseases by disturbing the balance of humors of an individual. “The devil knew how to cause or exacerbate natural disorders by disturbing the balance of the humors in people’s bodies” (189 Rosen). The belief that the devil could cause disorders in humans relates back to the belief of pagan. During the Elizabethan era, doctors believed that the body was made up of four humors. “Previously, doctors though mental illness was caused by"evil humour" (bodily fluids) that could be reduced by bloodletting” (Lace 78). When someone is sick, it means the humors were either disturbed or replaced with an “evil humor”, which is associated with evil spirits. A solution to this problem was by bloodletting, a process that includes taking blood from a patient by two different