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The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England -- Alanna Skuse, Hardcover
The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England -- Alanna Skuse, Hardcover
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Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine... and how not to die in the Renaissance
'An entertaining history of medicine... Skuse brings a deep familiarity with the contemporary sources and a dry wit.' Dan Jones, The Sunday Times The cliched view medicine in the Renaissance world is dreadful: gore-splattered hacksaws, arsenic concoctions, the four humours and all those leeches... Reality, however, proves somewhat different. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a medical revolution was afoot. Physicians' education was being formalised. Surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body with ever-greater skill. And, as European powers expanded into the New World, novel medicines and treatments were being discovered. Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England - a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics craftsmen, faith healers and snake oil merchants.
Author: Alanna Skuse
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 02/03/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.30w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781836430773
'An entertaining history of medicine... Skuse brings a deep familiarity with the contemporary sources and a dry wit.' Dan Jones, The Sunday Times The cliched view medicine in the Renaissance world is dreadful: gore-splattered hacksaws, arsenic concoctions, the four humours and all those leeches... Reality, however, proves somewhat different. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a medical revolution was afoot. Physicians' education was being formalised. Surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body with ever-greater skill. And, as European powers expanded into the New World, novel medicines and treatments were being discovered. Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England - a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics craftsmen, faith healers and snake oil merchants.
- Discover domestic healers like Elizabeth Freke, a doyenne of folk remedies, always ready to dole out tonics and elixirs to her ailing neighbours.
- Browse the shelves of the early modern apothecary with Nicholas Culpeper as he lays the groundwork for the modern pharmacy.
- Meet the expert midwife Jane Sharp, successful author and pioneer of women's health.
- Join the intrepid plague doctor George Thomson as he braves London's Great Plague.
Author: Alanna Skuse
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 02/03/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.30w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781836430773
About the Author
Dr Alanna Skuse is a literary scholar, historian and author. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading and has written and broadcasted for BBC Radio, Wellcome Stories, the Conversation and History Today.
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