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 thats 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. Theres 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, The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack reveals the miraculous birth of modern medicine.
