The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack

Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine.

When we imagine Renaissance medicine, the cliché is dreadful – unsterile instruments, a total lack of anaesthetics and shocking levels of infant and maternal mortality. And that’s before you get into astrology, bloodletting and a litany of bizarre ‘treatments’, more likely to kill than cure…

As ever, the true picture is somewhat different. Here, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern medicine began to take shape. Medical education was being formalised for the first time. Through dissections and hands-on experience in war, surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body and distributing their work across the continent. And, as European powers expanded their reach into the New World, new medicines and treatments were being discovered and cultivated.

Historian Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England – a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics’ craftsmen, faith healers and, of course, snake oil salesmen. There’s the domestic healer, her kitchen stocked with all manner of herbs, tonics and elixirs, ready to dole out to ailing neighbours; the expert midwife, called upon when the physician and surgeon failed; the trusted apothecary, shop stocked with remedies for every ailment and ingredients from each corner of the globe. Humane and entrancing, Surgeon, Scholar, Chemist, Quack reveals the miraculous birth of modern medicine.

Author Biography

Dr Alanna Skuse is a literary scholar, historian and author with a focus on stories about medicine, bodies, and Renaissance England. She teaches literature as Associate Professor at the University of Reading and has published academic books and articles on the history of cancer, surgery, disability, Shakespeare and self-harm. She also runs public history projects, and writes and broadcasts for BBC Radio, Wellcome Stories, the Conversation and History Today.