The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack - by Alanna Skuse (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine... and how not to die in the Renaissance
'Meticulously researched and deliciously detailed.' Victoria Shepherd, author of A History of Delusions

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.

Review Quotes

'Astonishing... Skuse's meticulously researched and deliciously detailed book brings a vivid cast of characters out of the shadows, and gives a proper place to the unsung pioneers.' --Victoria Shepherd, author of A History of Delusions

'A positive pharmacopoeia of physic from a bygone age... Eye-opening and perception changing, with just the right amount of gore, a must-read.' --Prof John Tregoning, author of Infectious

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.