By This is just a quick post to let readers know that Sara has a new book OUT NOW which some of you might find interesting. Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women’s Lives 1540-1740 has several chapters on health care and medicine. The role of the housewife in providing the first line
By Infertility, Miscarriage and Men
This is a shameless self promotion post I’m afraid. My latest two articles have just been published … ‘They are called Imperfect men’: Male Infertility and Sexual Health in Early Modern England’ The first is available open access in Social History of Medicine and explores how early modern medical writers
Plague Riddled Pigeons
Nearly all of us have grown up hearing about the horrors of the plague. It is common knowledge that, as one early modern pamphlet recorded, ‘The surest token of all to know the infected of the plague, is, if there doe arise and engender botches behind the eares, or under the
Guest Blog: Mothers and Sons
Mothers’ Worries over the Spiritual and Bodily Health of their Sons. Dr Sara Read In the seventeenth century it was common for high-ranking boys to be sent to study at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge from the age of around fourteen. As gentlemen, they often didn’t graduate – obtaining a degree wasn’t the