The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack

Wall Street Journal 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. Humane and entrancing, The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack reveals the people and stories behind a scientific revolution. 'Fascinating.' Daily Mail 'Meticulously researched and deliciously detailed.' Victoria Shepherd, author of A History of Delusions