The modern cure is penicillin (typical UK treatment is ten days of procaine penicillin). Syphilis, in its current, chronic form, is on the rise again in England. According to the British Medical Journal, since 1996 the number of diagnoses in England has more than doubled.

Pulmonary tuberculosis was called consumption in the 16th century because it appeared to “consume” its victims. It accounted for around one fifth of all deaths. Tubercular infections of the lymph nodes in the neck caused a disease known as scrofula. At that time there was no cure, though scrofula was thought curable if the king touched the sores. Samuel Johnson was among the thousands who queued for this cure.

Today, active TB is still widespread in the developing world and kills two of every three people affected if not untreated. Generally, it is treated with several antibiotics, called antituberculants, taken in various combinations in order that resistance is prevented.

Mental health: in the 16th century people considered truly mad were those who tore their clothes, disobeyed their natural masters (parents or social superiors), or wandered around naked. The many tribulations of women’s lives — miscarriages, the deaths of children, infertility — were often ascribed to mental troubles but visions, trances and hallucinations were not as feared then as now since they could form part of the religious experience.

Elizabethan practitioners thought frenzy and madness “proceed from the inflammation of the phlegms of the brain”, so changes in diet might be prescribed. They also blamed hysteria on “too much abstinence of Venus”, and, as late as the 19th century a typical “treatment” was massage of the patient’s genitalia by the physician and later vibrators or water sprays to cause orgasm. If society decided that London lunatics were too unpredictable or violent to roam free, they would be shut up in Bedlam, the fee-paying mental hospital, where they might have their heads shaved or be chained.

As an example of modern treatments, the Labour peer Lord Layard said recently that cognitive behavioural therapy was key in tackling mental troubles from anxiety to schizophrenia.

Insomnia: historically, extended and troubled sleeplessness was treated with a syrup of poppy, whose base ingredient was opium, then as now a powerful soporific.

Today, doctors try to avoid prescribing strong sedatives such as temazepam and alternative methods are often preferred, such as lavender, used in the 16th century to avert plague, or valerian, used in the 16th century for cooking soups and medicinally for treating “crampe and other convulsions”.

There were some other cures that are unlikely to be regain popularity. Hair falling out: rub scalp with burnt doves’ dung or the ashes of little frogs. Lice: comb hair with an ointment of mercury and swine grease. Colds: turnip up the nose. Headaches: a garland of verbena round the head, or “set a dish of tin on the bare head, put an ounce and a half, or two ounces, of molten lead therein while he has it on the head”. Teething in children: brains of a hare rubbed on to gums. Epilepsy: mistletoe “taken in the month of March and the moon decreasing”. Chilblains: a hot mouse skin rubbed on them.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett is published by HarperCollins at £15