forsooth good lords and gentle ladies tis the elizabethan era we say things like tis and wear puffy clothes it is the time of shakespeare the empire and circumnavigating the world let's purposefully rot our teeth dress in freaky beak masks and make corpses testify in court today on nutty history it's the creepiest things that were normal in the elizabethan era [Music] the elizabethan era was the period of english history in which elizabeth the first reigned as the queen 1558-1603 it was considered a golden age for england a time of relative peace prosperity and artistic achievement queen
elizabeth managed to moderate the catholic verses protestant divide that had been tearing england apart in the previous century and her fiscal policy led to financial prosperity there was a reason she was known as good queen bess just don't look in her mouth elizabeth's teeth like the teeth of many of the rich and well-to-do were absolutely awful black and rotten english high society frequently indulged in an expensive luxury item shipped in from england's colonies sugar they put sugar in fruits and vegetables and created elaborate sculptures out of multiple sugar pastes like marzipan queen elizabeth had a
major sweet tooth and loved expensive sugary treats like rose water sugar cubes and gingerbread but they didn't just love eating it in the elizabethan era they believe that sugar had medicinal properties a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down but also rots your teeth black ironically they also would rub sugar on their teeth to prevent decay which spoiler alert didn't work the end result of this saccharine surge was that the richer you were the blacker and grosser your teeth tended to be but fashion tends to follow the rich and powerful so the poorer classes
who wanted to seem fancier would purposefully blacken their teeth with soot man everyone would think you were such a poser if you drank a glass of water and your beautiful perfect pearly whites were exposed in front of the whole skull britney's teeth were actually dying inside her mouth thanks very much thinking that sugar made for good toothpaste was one sign of the state of medical science at this time but we can't bring up medicine in the elizabethan era without mentioning those creepy beak-nosed plague doctors see disease was a major problem in the elizabethan era the
science of how germs transmit was not well understood and most populated places had terrible sanitation that made perfect breeding grounds for a disease known as the bubonic plague this really really awful disease is also known by the charming name of the black death and killed off more than a third of europe in the 1300s the plague is transmitted by infected fleas but at the time they believed it was caused by bad air this now debunked idea is known as the meismetic theory of disease basically smells so gross they make you sick so to combat this
bad air doctors would wear masks with long beaks the beaks being stuffed full of sweet-smelling herbs needless to say this did not work so well and neither did the doctor's various attempts to treat the plague with things like bloodletting and bathing people in vinegar the admittedly metal-looking medical fashion sense fell out of use as we began to understand more about how diseases transmit and how to treat them the beaks however would go on to have a fruitful career being worn by the arch villain of that one series of my hero academia but wacky scientific theories
weren't the only thing in vogue in the elizabethan era it turns out they also had wacky legal theories too you've probably heard of the crazy ways they hunted for witches like throwing them in the water to see if they float naturally if they weigh as much as a duck they must be made of wood witches got blamed for almost anything bad that happened in elizabethan england including the plague actually just having a knowledge of herbs could mark you as a witch as it was believed that knowledge could only come from a pact with the devil
but queen elizabeth was in a weird way fairer than others towards those accused of being witches though she passed harsher anti-witch laws torture was not allowed and witchcraft was not defined as heresy which kept the church from becoming involved in the trials also despite the american vogue of burning witches in england they were generally hanged queen liz's mother ann berlin had a sixth finger and was accused of being a witch herself which might have led to elizabeth's relatively merciful attitude still pretty messed up though to be honest but it wasn't just accused witches who had
to deal with this legal nonsense if you were suspected of being a murderer one of the things they might do is have you go up to the corpse of the person you supposedly murdered and poke them if the corpse starts to bleed spontaneously it meant the victim identified you as their killer this method is known as cruentation and like the witch trial antics it is a form of trial by ordeal a trial by ordeal is where basically the court expected god to intervene and help the innocent and punish the guilty saving the courts and the
police from having to do any actual work the practice actually dates back to before the middle ages and was an accepted legal method for determining guilt or innocence it was believed that a corpse could still see and hear for some time after death and would bleed if their killer came too close nowadays we know that corpses are gross and sometimes just ooze stuff but the idea was well accepted at the time shakespeare mentions it in his play henry vi oh gentlemen cc dead henry's wounds open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh gross a scientific understanding
increased and the law slowly became less cartoonishly unfair corentation died out england stopped use of the practice at the end of the 17th century the elizabethan era was a time of extravagance and innovation but also when old ideas ran headlong into new things it may be that things we consider normal today will seem creepy and strange to the people of the future as shakespeare said there are more things in heaven and earth horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy also black teeth look really cool we're paraphrasing [Music]
