Greg Jenner

And it's all gone to pot.

We'll get to that later.

You're kind of spot on, actually, with some of this stuff.

You're kind of right that women's sort of roles, I think, were more important than often given credit.

We'll come to that a little later.

The other thing I suppose we need to talk about, as well as purging, the bloodletting with leeches.

Blackadder was correct?

Yes.

Yes, because that's the Galenic theories that you make new blood through the liver.

And so you'll just produce new blood and then you'll be fine.

Wow.

And what about the menstrual cycle?

I suppose, you know, if we're talking about these, that's regular bleeding that's meant to happen.

Oh, so haemorrhoids was like a natural... Yeah.

Oh, really?

You'd expect to get to your late 50s probably, wouldn't you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Plenty of elderly people, but unfortunately, child mortality was so high, the mean average gets dragged way down.

Alana, one famous disease that ravaged England late in this period was the plague, especially the plague of 1665.

Did physicians have any idea how to deal with it?