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

1601 – 1628
1601 Poor Law Act (43 Eliz. c.2) consolidated and replaced all earlier acts (see 1598), but
did not innovate. This act remained the basis on which the poor were helped until 1834.
Although administration was sometimes lax and sometimes heartless, it was often well
intentioned and recognised that poverty was a problem requiring social action. The parish
was the unit of administration which raised difficulties in large urban areas and in the
scattered hamlets in the north and west. See 1662.
1602 A City of London Proclamation, extending one of 1580, banned further building within
three miles of the gates of the City; prohibited multiple occupation of existing buildings; and
ordered lodgers who had arrived during the preceding seven years to leave. See 1667.
1603 An inquiry, along the lines of that of 1563, carried out focusing on the number of
communicants in each parish, with the result that dissenters and Catholics were excluded
from the count. See 1678.
1603-10 Intermittent epidemics of bubonic plague in various cities; power was given in
1604 to mayors, bailiffs and justices to order people to stay indoors and to take other
measures (2 Jas. c.31). See 1625.
1604 "Counterblaste to Tobacco" by James I published. The King described smoking as "a
custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the
lungs". See 1950.
1617 A Scottish Act instructed justices to apply the law against wilful beggars and
vagabonds, solitary and idle men without calling or trade .... and those people commonly
called the Egyptians.
Society of Apothecaries formed by the separation of apothecaries from grocers. The
apothecaries were granted the exclusive privilege of selling drugs and of compounding
medicines. See 1632.
The Privy Council in Scotland ordered the magistrates to clean Edinburgh Town
which had become "filthy and unclean, and the streets, vennels, wynds, and closets thereof
overlaid and covered with middlings and with filth".
"The Surgeons Mate" by John Woodall (1556-1643, surgeon at St Bartholomew's
Hospital) published. One of the earliest books on naval medicine; advocated limes and
lemons as a preventive measure against scurvy (see 1753).
1618 The first London Pharmacopoeia published.
1620 The Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America in the Mayflower and landed at Cape Cod.
1621 "The Anatomy of Melancholy" by Robert Burton (1577-1640, clergyman) published.
1625 Epidemic of plague caused an estimated 20,000 deaths in 11 weeks. See 1636.
Horse-drawn fire engines introduced.
1628 A Petition of Right presented to the King concerning "divers Rights and Liberties of
the Subjects" (3 Cha. c.1).