Book cover of Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-Century England

Book description

Lucinda McCray Beier's remarkable book, first published in 1987, enters the world of illness in seventeenth-century England, exploring what it was like to be either a sufferer or a healer. A wide spectrum of healers existed, ranging between the housewife, with her simple herbal preparations, local cunning-folk and bonestters, travelling…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Sufferers and Healers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Originally published in 1987 this book is a classic text for those studying health and disease in this era. Drawing on diaries and printed materials it explains what people died of in the era and what conditions they lived with. It describes how people responded to ill health both spiritually and medically and it provides a series of case studies to illuminate different aspects of health, including women’s health. Using practitioners’ casebooks, it thinks about the differences between an urban surgeon and the practice of rural physicians. It thus moves beyond generalizations to show that practitioners worked alongside each other…

From Jennifer's list on early modern medicine.

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Book cover of The High House

The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

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Book cover of Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England
Book cover of Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600-1750
Book cover of Female Patients in Early Modern Britain: Gender, Diagnosis, and Treatment

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