Soldier to Healer

About this learning resource

Format: PDF

Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned at the Tower of London for 13 years. Under constant threat of execution, Raleigh struggled with poor mental health. This lesson pack explores the extraordinary story of how this soldier and explorer helped rebuild his own mental health and wellbeing by developing a medicinal garden outside his prison cell at the Tower and preparing plant-based remedies. Students compare the ingredients Raleigh used in his medicines, as well as the medical treatments and beliefs of the late 1500s and early 1600s, with today.

National Curriculum links

• Address… historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance
• Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources
• Study an aspect or theme in British history that extends their chronological knowledge beyond 1066

Learning objectives

• Learn about Sir Walter Raleigh through the story of his imprisonment in the Tower of London and his medicinal garden
• Understand that artefacts can tell us about the lives and beliefs of people in the past
• Make comparisons between medicine in the past and medicine today

Resource Information