Month: August 2013

In this week’s blog post I am returning to the medical treatise of William Drage, the apothecary and physician of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, who we saw last week moaning about medical learning. Male pattern baldness can be rather distressing. It is joked about and poked fun at, as are the attempts at

William Drage was born in Northamptonshire on the 8th January 1636. He had a grammar-school education and was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1658 he opened his own apothecary shop in Hitchin (Hertfordshire) and established himself as a physician. He had an extensive practice that included the local gentry.1 The

Dr Chris Langley Birth, Infanticide and Midwifery in early modern Scotland. The Church of Scotland was obsessed with sex. More accurately, ecclesiastical leaders in sixteenth and seventeenth century Scotland were alarmed by the loose morality of their congregations. By the seventeenth century, Scotland was divided into twelve provinces and seventy-two

Dr Sara Read In the second of our occasional series on the kinds of therapeutic treatments that early modern medicine had to offer, we are going to look at the pessary. In 1583 Philip Barrough explained what a pessary was: Pessarie is a medicine which is made of softe woll,

This month’s history blog posts have covered a range of different topics, time periods, and ideas. Below is a round of a few of the posts I have really enjoyed! Royalty and Regalia This month on his blog Matt Lewis has been discussing Richard the III, both his coronation, and