The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack by Alanna Skuse - ISBN: 9781836432609
Paperback
Renaissance medicine: gore, miracles, and the birth of healing.
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The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack

How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England

$26.36

  • Paperback

    384 pages

  • Release Date

    2 March 2027

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Summary

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…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781836432609
ISBN-10:1836432607
Author:Alanna Skuse
Publisher:Oneworld Publications
Imprint:Oneworld Publications
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:384
Release Date:2 March 2027
Dimensions:28mm x 129mm x 198mm
A-Format
B-Format
The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack by Alanna Skuse - ISBN: 9781836432609
129 × 198 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack by Alanna Skuse is an entertaining history of medicineSkuse brings a deep familiarity with the contemporary sources and a dry wit.’ —Dan Jones, The Sunday Times


Fascinating.’ —Daily Mail


In Ms. Skuse’s expert and frequently humorous telling, Renaissance medicine comes to life in all its gory and weird splendor. She offers us a glimpse of the medical marketplace at its birth but also provides us with a distant mirror… readers will encounter surprising characters in a richly researched and atmospheric history of the medical Renaissance.’ —Wall Street Journal


‘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


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

About The Author

Alanna Skuse

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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