Podcast Summary: "How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England"

Not Just the Tudors | Hosted by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb | Guest: Dr. Alana Skuse
Date: October 20, 2025

Episode Overview

This engaging episode explores the perilous and fascinating world of healthcare in Renaissance England. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb interviews Dr. Alana Skuse, Associate Professor at the University of Reading and author of How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England, to uncover the realities, misconceptions, and innovations that shaped the medical landscape during the 16th and 17th centuries. The conversation delves into medical practices, the roles of various healers, perceptions of disease, and the blurred boundaries between science, tradition, and faith.

Key Discussion Points

The Landscape of Renaissance Medicine

• Constant Threats to Health
  Illness, from plague and pox to wounds and melancholy, was ever-present. Medical care was both a science and an act of imagination, faith, and community resilience.

  • “Medicine in this period was as much about imagination and faith as it was about science.” (03:13)

• The Spectrum of Practitioners
  Healers ranged from elite physicians and surgeons to apothecaries, midwives, bonesetters, and household women, with “quacks” filling the gaps.

  • Physicians: Expensive, highly trained, Galenic theory adherents (i.e., focused on humors).
  • Surgeons: Often maligned as “butchers,” but drove innovation through hands-on practice, especially in warfare.
  • Apothecaries: Ubiquitous, essential, sometimes viewed with suspicion due to the power of their remedies.
  • Domestic Healers (women): Central to daily and emergency care; knowledge passed via “receipt” books.

The Logic and Practice of Renaissance Medicine

• Perceptions of Health & Disease: The Four Humors

  • Health was seen as a balance between blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy), mapped onto hot/cold and wet/dry qualities.
  • “It’s almost like us thinking in terms of cells today… that’s what it’s like for most people when they're understanding the humors.” (09:24)

• Holistic Treatments

  • Treatment aimed to restore equilibrium, primarily through diet, purges, vomiting, bloodletting, and lifestyle adjustments.
  • “In a way, all treatment is holistic. They have a very holistic view of the body….” (11:06)

• Placebo and Common Sense

  • Many remedies worked through suggestion or common-sense measures—some, like willow for pain, have genuinely effective ingredients.
  • “There's a massive placebo effect… but there are also a lot of common sense things.” (13:11)

• Domestic Medicine & Women’s Expertise

  • Receipt books functioned as family medical encyclopedias, documenting remedies, experiments, and results.
  • “Any self-respecting… woman… will be keeping what we call a receipt book or a recipe book. And that contains… a lot of medical recipes.” (15:07)

Medical Professions and Innovations

• Physicians

  • Relied on detailed patient interviews, urine analysis (even tasting it to diagnose diabetes), and narrative diagnosis, often at a distance.
  • Case: Mrs. Ladd’s cancer treatment—emotional letters trace hope and despair amid dangerous mercury or arsenic remedies.
    • “She cries a porridge bowl’s worth of tears.” (21:00)

• Surgeons

  • Developed practical skills out of necessity, especially on battlefields; innovations included careful use of prostheses and new approaches to wound care.
  • Ambroise Paré’s discoveries, such as abandoning boiling oil for gunshot wounds, advanced surgical practices.
  • “You need a particular temperament, I think, to be a surgeon… and some of the surgeon’s textbooks advise… train on dead bodies or even animal carcasses.” (26:14)
  • Patient endurance: The story of Mrs. Townsend, who survived mastectomy without anaesthetic and lived for years after. (27:25–27:46)

• Apothecaries

  • Vital for dispensing both prescribed and self-developed cures, sometimes stepping in when physicians or surgeons were unavailable.
  • In times of plague, apothecaries stayed in cities to care for the sick, earning respect and trust.
    • “Some of the accounts… are quite touching. There's one who says he sits by the bedside of his patients… holds their hand while they're dying because there's nobody else to do it.” (36:52)

Gender and Medical Authority

• Midwives and Female Healers

  • Outnumbered physicians and surgeons by far, though experiences among midwives varied widely due to lack of regulation.
  • Childbirth was dangerous: ~1% maternal mortality; up to 10% infant mortality before age one.
  • Medical texts often betrayed deep misunderstandings of female anatomy, e.g., the “wandering womb” and the “one sex model.”
  • “There's a great deal of mysteriousness about the womb… The womb can kind of get a bit loose and start roaming around your body a little bit.” (40:51)

• Resistance to Professionalisation

  • While men sought to formalise and control medicine, women fiercely defended their roles and practices.
  • “Female practitioners don’t take that lying down… at the end of the 17th century, the midwives are still unregulated, they're still in charge of probably 99% of birth, despite the best efforts of the men.” (48:04)

Quacks, Unlicensed Healers, and Medical Regulation

• Blurred Boundaries
  • The line between “real” doctors and “quacks” was often social and economic, not just about skill or knowledge.
  • Case of faith healer Valentine Great Rakes—drew support from the elite and the Royal Society, blurring lines between miracle and medicine.
  • Punishments for unlicensed practice existed but were not strong deterrents. Some preferred to pay fines as a business expense.
    • “Often people were making enough money that they just didn’t really care that much…” (53:08)

Hospitals and Medical Institutions

• Emergence and Evolution
  • Early hospitals were more like hospices; the Civil War prompted increased investment and professionalization.
  • Hospital and medical staff began to integrate more closely, with prominent surgeons like John Woodall at St Bart’s.

Misconceptions and Modern Reflections

• Enduring Myths

  • Many contemporary assumptions—such as diseases like cancer being “modern”—are false; cancer, diabetes, and epilepsy were well-recognized.
  • “Don’t think that they're just looking at people and saying, that person's possessed. Very few diseases get attributed to witchcraft or demonic influence.” (56:16)

• Surprising Discoveries

  • The emotional toll of researching patient narratives (e.g., the Henry Moore letters about Mrs. Ladd) was unexpectedly powerful for Dr. Skuse.

• Who would Dr. Skuse trust with her care?

  • Ambroise Paré, the innovative French surgeon: “He is just cracking… the progress he makes in a short space of time is astounding.” (59:09)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Segments

• Dr. Alana Skuse on internal logic in historical medicine:

  • “There is an internal logic to this stuff and I know that people are looking for the best they can do in the same way that we are today.” (05:25)

• On women's contribution:

  • “Some women, particularly upper class women, are really good at this stuff… they will pass down those books… If they don’t have daughters, they’ll pass them to a niece…” (15:07)

• On apothecaries during the plague outbreak:

  • “My feeling is that it’s a substantial portion, maybe up to sort of 30, 40% of apothecaries who are operating in London have died from staying there and looking after plague victims.” (36:52)

• Reframing quackery and alternative medicine:

  • “The battle for what is real medicine and what’s going to be alternative medicine or quackery is taking place in front of our very eyes.” (53:01)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:52 – Episode Begins: Framing medicine in Renaissance England
• 05:19 – Dr. Alana Skuse joins; her motivations for researching Renaissance medicine
• 09:08 – Explanation of the four humors and their significance
• 11:06 – Holistic approaches to treatment; purges, diet, bloodletting
• 15:07 – Domestic medicine and women’s “receipt books”
• 18:04 – How physicians diagnosed illness
• 21:00 – The poignant case of Mrs. Ladd and her cancer treatment
• 22:14 – The evolving profession and reputation of surgeons
• 26:14 – The courage required for surgery and the story of Mrs. Townsend
• 36:52 – Role of apothecaries, especially during the plague
• 40:51 – Misunderstandings about the female body; the “wandering womb”
• 48:04 – The struggle for professionalisation versus female healers’ resistance
• 53:01 – Faith healers and the quack/doctor divide
• 56:16 – Debunking myths about historical medicine and disease
• 58:30 – Dr. Skuse’s most surprising research discovery
• 59:09 – Who Dr. Skuse would choose as her physician

Concluding Insights

This episode offers a vivid, respectful look at how Renaissance England’s medical world was much more complex, dynamic, and experimental than conventional narratives suggest. From holistic home remedies and the often-overlooked expertise of women, to the grim realities and innovations of surgery, listeners gain a new appreciation for the courage and resourcefulness at every level of early modern healthcare.

For those seeking a deeper dive, Dr. Alana Skuse’s book, How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England, comes highly recommended.