Physick and the family : health, medicine and care in Wales, 1600-1750 / Alun Withey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Withey, Alun.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicine--Wales--History--17th century.

Medicine.

Wales.

History.

Medicine--History--17th century.

Medicine--History--18th century.

Delivery of Health Care--history.

Medical Subjects:

Delivery of Health Care--history.

Physical Description:

xii, 240 pages : illustrations, map, faxsim. ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Physick and the family offers new insights into the early modern experience of illness, medicine and care, through a study of the medical history of seventeenth-century Wales. Withey draws upon an extensive body of largely unexplored source material, as well as a number of different approaches and methodologies, to make a significant contribution to many areas of debate in medical history.

How did people obtain and disseminate medical knowledge in early modern Britain? What was the impact of literacy? How was this further affected by a language barrier? How well equipped was the early modern household to prepare medicines? Likewise, who was responsible for caring for the sick, both in the home and the community? In addressing such questions, this book ranges across important themes such as literacy and language, the scope of medical knowledge, domestic medicine and the rural medical marketplace. Using a wealth of sources, from probate inventories to parish records and diaries to domestic remedy collections, it seeks to recover the hitherto neglected medical worldview of the 'ordinary' person.

This innovative study will speak to a broad spectrum of academics and scholars not only of medical history, but of the wider social history of the early modern period.

Alun Withey is a lecturer and researcher in early modern history at Swansea University. Book jacket.

Contents:

Disease and mortality in early modern Wales

" Fruits of sin, forerunners of dissolution': sickness and disease in early modern Wales

Medical knowledge in early modern Wales

The Welsh body and popular medical culture

Medicine, oral and print culture

An economy of knowledge: social networks and the spread of medical information

Domestic sickness and care in the Welsh home

Care and the Welsh medical home

Sickness experience and the " sick role'

Caring for the sick

" Neighbourliness' and the medical community.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [211]-236) and index.

ISBN:

9780719085468

0719085462

OCLC:

724656909