A Chronology of State Medicine, Public Health, Welfare and Related ...

1462 - 1499
1462 First Royal Charter of the Barbers Guild; the Guild was concerned with the treatment
of the sick and hurt by outward applications; its functions were restricted to the City of
London and one mile around. See 1505 and 1540.
1463 Import controls. "Certain Merchandices not lawful to be brought ready wrought into
this Realm" included playing cards, dice and woollen clothes, silk and embroidery, leather
and metal goods among other things (3 Edw.IV, c.4).
1467 Beverley (Yorks) passed a rule forbidding the building of any more kilns because of
the stink and badness of the air, and the detriment of fruit trees (ref. Briggs, Social History of
England, p.110).
1477 William Caxton set up a printing press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
1485 Outbreak of "sweating sickness" during the summer (nature and cause still debated).
See 1508.
c.1486 Publication of the first book concerned with preventive practices to be written in
English. "Here begynneth a litil boke the which traytied and rehearsed many gode things
necessarie for the pestilence". Attributed to Canutus.
1487 Justices of the Peace Act (4 Hen.VII, c.12) revised and set out anew their duties to
"redress injuries and maintain the laws". See 1530.
1491 Caxton published "Journals of Health".
1494 Vagabonds and Beggars Act (11 Henry VII, c.2). "Vagabonds, idle and suspected
persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other
sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to
work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there
remain upon the pain aforesaid". Beggars who were too infirm to work were to remain in
their Hundred and be permitted to beg.
King's College, Aberdeen, founded; became effective in 1505. See 1858.
1496 Syphilis spreads through Europe. In 1497 Aberdeen passed a statute to segregate
women infected with syphilis.
1499 Plague returned to England and Scotland; there were at least 20,000 deaths in England.
See 1513.
1500 - 1529
At the beginning of the sixteenth century ideals, methods and customs, which had existed for
centuries, were being challenged. The old feudal ways of life had largely disappeared and a
new aristocracy drawn from the ranks of the growing middle classes had begun to emerge.
The triumph of the Crown over the Church during the 1530s marked the close of the Middle