Month: March 2014

You may remember that some time ago I wrote a blog post about ‘the Stone’ (kidney stones or bladder stones). I looked at how remedies for the stone were described and discovered. The post also emphasised how painful this disease could be and how dangerous its cure was. Surgical operations to

Lichfield Garrick Theatre and Studio, Saturday 15 March 2014 Reviewed by Sara Read The decision to construct a stage performance from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is certainly an innovative one. The wordy nature of the book, which started out at over 300, 000 words in 1621 and

My latest academic article is now available on open access at Historical Research’s website: Female barrenness, bodily access and aromatic treatments in seventeenth-century England Across the seventeenth century medical self-help manuals noted that aromatic substances were a suitable remedy for female barrenness. It has often been suggested that in the

Medical texts in the early modern period included much material that modern readers may not consider medical. They often included remedies for making the skin clear and blemish free or for removing excess and unwanted facial and bodily hair. Peter Leven’s medical treatise also offered a range hair dyes. In

People often say that early modern men and women didn’t drink water because it was dangerous. Medical writers were clearly worried about the safety of drinking water. But it was not just dirt that they feared, but the possibility of swallowing creatures that would then live inside the body. John