Aim:
To raise children's awareness of people's health and mortality, in Tudor times.

Objective:
To show children specific methods of preventing ill-health and attempting to cure ill-health in Tudor times.

Resources:
Equipment for making pomanders, pestle and mortar, dried and fresh herbs.

Method:
Tell children that physicians in Tudor times studied the writings of the Greek doctor Galen and tried to help well-off people with their health and well-being. They knew that a varied diet and adequate rest helped to keep people healthy and could help cure illness - ask the children if these factors are still important nowadays.

Tell the children that barber-surgeons also were in practice, who not only cut and shaved hair but also extracted teeth, treated battle wounds, set broken bones and amputated limbs. No pain-killers were available for use and patients often died from the shock of treatment or from subsequent infection. 'Blood-letting' was commonly-practised and leeches were commonly used to suck blood from patients, in an effort to draw out 'bad blood'. (Show some examples of leeches, if available). Few people lived past the age of forty; ask children why they think this was so.

Tell children that poor people went to seek medical help from 'wise women' in villages, who helped with childbirth, (during which many women and infants died) and who could make medicines from herbs. Many people used herbal remedies to try and help them with their ailments.

Let children experiment with herbs and a pestle and mortar, to crush the herbs and question them as to how the crushed herbs may have been made into medicines, (often boiled up with water). Tell the children that pills and potions were also available from apothecaries - ask what these people are known as these days (chemists).

Make the children familiar with the Tudor practice of freshening their clothes, especially when stored, with pomanders.

Ask the children why this practice would have been necessary and show them how a simple pomander could be made. Encourage the children to make their own pomanders with materials provided and discuss why pomanders are not widely used, these days.