Renaissance Medicine: healthcare and disease in early modern England

Summary

Podcast Summary: You're Dead to Me – Renaissance Medicine: Healthcare and Disease in Early Modern England

Host: Greg Jenner (Public Historian)
Guests: Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, University of Reading), Dr. Ria Lina (Comedian and Virologist)
Date: February 6, 2026
Theme: Exploring medicine, health, disease, and healthcare professions in 16th and 17th-century England with humor and historical insight.

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Episode Overview

This lively episode delves into England’s Renaissance era medicine, examining the world before microbes, antibiotics, and germ theory. Host Greg Jenner is joined by comedian and virologist Dr. Ria Lina and historian Dr. Alana Skous. Together they unpack medical theories, notorious practices like bloodletting, and the roles of both professionals and quacks—paying special attention to entertaining (and sometimes eyebrow-raising) historical anecdotes.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Scene: What Was Renaissance Medicine?

• Defining the Era ([04:51])
  • England's "Renaissance" is later than Italy/France, covering 16th and 17th centuries (Tudor and Stuart).
  • Early modern period is a more accurate historical term, but "Renaissance" is popularized for accessibility.
  • Renaissance medicine was similar across Europe—English doctors traveled to continental universities to learn anatomy and techniques.

Humoral Theory and Diagnosis

• Humors and Health ([08:21])
  • Medicine was based on Galenism: health depended on balancing four bodily humors—blood (hot/wet), phlegm (cold/wet), yellow bile (hot/dry), black bile (cold/dry).
  • Personality types were mapped to humors: "sanguine" (jolly), "melancholic" (sad), etc.
  • [Quote, Dr. Alana Skous, 09:25] "That's what you want. That's the one we want." (referring to hot, wet, sanguine blood)
  • Misconceptions about black/yellow bile were common; yellow bile rarely observed directly.

Who Were the Medical Practitioners?

• Physicians ([12:04])
  • Educated, university-trained, Latin/Greek-speaking. Entry required a seven-year education plus licensing (established by the Royal College of Physicians in 1518).
  • High status, expensive—mainly served the rich.
  • Diagnosed primarily via detailed histories and uroscopy (urine examination, including taste and smell) ([14:00]).
  • [Quote, Greg Jenner, 14:55] "So they're literally taking the piss."
• Barber Surgeons ([31:22])
  • Started as barbers (skilled with blades), later split into a separate surgical profession ("Company of Barber Surgeons" founded 1534).
  • Performed amputations, bloodletting, cyst/lithotomy, mastectomies, hernia repairs—with minimal pain management.
• Apothecaries ([34:12])
  • Originated from spice and pepper traders; evolved into pharmacists who both filled prescriptions and sold their own concoctions.
  • Served all social classes, were plentiful in cities, and often stayed to treat patients during plagues when physicians fled.
• Midwives and Women Healers ([40:04])
  • Despite lack of formal records, noble and middling-class women did the majority of healthcare, from family care to serious cases.
  • Commercial remedy books by women (e.g., Hannah Woolley) were highly popular.
• Quacks and Oddballs ([36:10])
  • Notable "stroker" Valentine Greatrakes "cured" ailments by stroking patients—part faith healer, part psychological placebo.
  • "Quack" comes from Dutch "quak salva" (one who loudly hawks ointments).
  • Wild, folkish cures (e.g., staring at toads, carrying gemstones, drinking puppy water) coexisted with more mainstream practices.

Treatments and Public Health

• Classic Remedies ([16:12])
  • Most advice was diet/regimen-based—aimed to "balance the humors."
  • Purging (vomiting, diarrhea, bloodletting) was routine for nearly every illness. Mercury—highly toxic—was used as a "cure" for syphilis.
• Social Responses to Disease ([21:43])
  • During major plague outbreaks, England saw proto-public health measures: social distancing, marking houses, bans on movement. Italy pioneered the "quarantine."
• Scientific Progress ([25:57])
  • William Harvey demonstrated the circulation of blood—a major blow to Galenic theory.
  • Early blood transfusions by Christopher Wren and others: experiments mostly on animals, but a few (often disastrous) human attempts.

Women, Midwifery, and the Medical Marketplace

• Role of Women ([40:04])
  • Women not only administered care but were sources for much knowledge later published by male authors like Culpepper.
  • Midwives’ skills ranged from herbalism to surgery; some noblewomen provided robust care to their households and communities.
• Male Encroachment and Technology ([47:04])
  • The Chamberlain family’s secret grip on forceps technology (hidden for about a century).
  • Lack of regulation for midwives: no formal training required until 1902!
  • [Quote, Dr. Rhea, 48:17]: "The damage that's done to the woman because of the design of forceps is horrific… because it was designed by people for other people, so the people who designed it were never going to be the recipients of it."

Societal Change and Welfare

• Post-Monastic Welfare Systems ([51:14])
  • The dissolution of monasteries ended the main medieval charity/hospital system. Elizabeth I’s acts created early forms of state welfare, leading to parish support for disabled soldiers and the rise of major hospitals.
  • [Quote, Dr. Alana Skous, 51:14]: "So there's this big emphasis on the market… but we also have to remember that this is the birth of a lot of the public health that we now know."

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [04:31] Dr. Rhea: "When you say Renaissance, great. I'm thinking Italians, I'm thinking French, then you said England, and I went, oh… that could be as big as, 'we don't poo inside outdoors anymore.'"
• [14:55] Greg Jenner: "So they're literally taking the piss."
• [18:05] Dr. Rhea: "It's crazy how close they are to something good for you—if you just took away the mercury, it's a sauna."
• [19:26] Dr. Alana Skous: "They don't use leeches all the time. Sometimes they just cut you and let you bleed into a bowl…"
• [37:24] Dr. Alana Skous: On the "stroker": "It's sort of feathery stroking."
  Dr. Rhea: "It's Irish Reiki."
• [41:31] Greg Jenner: "So, one of the most famous women of this era would be Hannah Woolley."
  Dr. Alana Skous: "Yeah, Hannah Woolley is kind of like Martha Stewart."
• [44:00] Dr. Alana Skous: "Puppy water can either be puppy wee or water in which you've boiled a puppy."
• [48:17] Dr. Rhea: "The damage that's done to the woman because of the design of forceps is horrific… because it was designed by people for other people, so the people who designed it were never going to be the recipients of it."
• [51:14] Dr. Alana Skous (Nuance Window): "Commercialization is driving medical specialism… but we also have to remember this is the birth of a lot of the public health we know now."
• [53:54] Dr. Alana Skous: "That's where we get passports from, because it's the pass that lets you get through the port… back to your home village."

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Key Timestamps

• 04:51 – Defining the English Renaissance and its medicine.
• 08:21 – Overview of Galenic humoral theory and its impact.
• 12:04 – Physicians: training, role, and social status.
• 14:00 – Diagnostic practices: urine, pulse, and the limits of knowledge.
• 16:56 – Bloodletting, purging, and popular demand for such treatments.
• 21:43 – Plague, public health, and proto-quarantine.
• 25:57 – William Harvey, circulation, and breakthroughs.
• 31:22 – Barber-surgeons, surgical procedures, and their evolution.
• 34:12 – Apothecaries, community medicine, and Nicholas Culpepper.
• 36:10 – Quacks and the colorful world of folk healers.
• 40:04 – Women's roles, midwifery, and unheralded caregivers.
• 47:04 – Male intervention in childbirth (forceps), late regulation.
• 51:14 – Nuance Window: Market forces and beginnings of public welfare.
• 53:54 – The link between the welfare act, parishes, and passports.

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Final Thoughts

The episode presents 16th and 17th-century English medicine as an overlapping world of ancient theory, incremental innovation, folk remedies, and shifting gender roles, all underpinned by a gradually emerging public health infrastructure. Despite modern eyes seeing Renaissance healthcare as primitive or perilous, the hosts highlight its surprising continuities with today—from welfare roots to enduring medical superstitions.

Listeners leave with respect (and relief!) for today’s medical advances—but also an appreciation of the colorful cast and inventiveness of our past healers.

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Recommended if you enjoyed this episode:

• Ancient Medicine
• Renaissance Beauty in Italy
• The Kellogg Brothers
• Episodes on Hannah Woolley, Jane Sharp, and Nicholas Culpepper

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“You’re Dead To Me” makes tricky topics easy and entertaining—and this foray into Renaissance medicine is as eye-watering as it is enlightening.

Transcript

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[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

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[Advertiser Voice]

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[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Edu.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Hello and welcome to youo're Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we're putting on our plague masks and rummaging in our doctor's bags as we head back to 16th century England to learn all about Renaissance era medicine. And to help us, we are joined by not one, but two esteemed doctors. In History Corner, she's an associate professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, where her research focuses on medicine and the body from the 16th to 18th centuries. Luckily for us, she's also the author of the fantastic new book the Surgeon, the Midwife and the Quack. How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England. It's Dr. Alana Skous. Welcome, Alana.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Hello. Nice to be here.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Lovely to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, actor and writer. You might have seen her on all the TV on Live at the Apollo qi. Pointless and Haven't Got News for your. Maybe you've caught her live shows or heard her on Radio 4's the News Quiz, but you'll definitely remember her from our show episodes of Chungy Sao and Marco Polo. Of course, it's Dr. Rialina. Welcome, Dr. Rhea.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Thank you so much. I rarely use that title, so it's nice to use it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I mean, you're such a sort of renowned comedian. People might not know this. You have a PhD in virology I do.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

From my sins. I have a PhD in herpes. That's my specialty.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

The classic route into comedy.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It just doesn't come up much, especially on a first date. I really.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So if you are a trained scientist, modern medicine, presumably you're pretty comfortable. Do you know about the history of medicine?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I know bits and pieces. I did the evolution of herpes. That was sort of my. Well, not the evolution of it. Like, from what it looked like at the beginning to what it looks like now. I mean, it was pretty much the same. Well, it wasn't, but you know what I mean, Like, I know bits and pieces, but when you study virus evolution, it actually doesn't come up in terms of human medicine as frequently as you would have thought, even though you can kind of look back and go, ah, that was a virus. That was a virus. But so I'm excited.

[Phil Wang (Podcast Promoter)]

Good.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Especially 16th century. I've been sitting here for five minutes going, is that the 1500s or the 1700s? Because it's always one number out, isn't it?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It's the 1500s.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The 1500s.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Well, I was going to ask you actually, you know, does the phrase Renaissance era England mean anything to you?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

See, when you say Renaissance, great. I'm thinking Italians, I'm thinking French, I'm thinking some wonderful progression in science. Then you said England, and I went, oh, that's a very different. You know, that could be as big as. We don't poo inside outdoors anymore. Do you know what I mean? Like, progress for the English, especially back then, wasn't quite the same as progress for the rest of Europe.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And thanks to Shakespeare's plays and the many weird and wonderful adaptations you've seen, plus all the pop culture about Tudors and Stuarts, you've probably got some sense of what life was like in Renaissance era England. But what about disease and healthcare specifically? Well, maybe, like me, you're just thinking of the classic scene in Blackadder where the cure for everything is leeches. But what was visiting the doctor in Renaissance England really like? Was there more to it than plague masks? Did they use plague masks? And what about those leeches? Were they true? Oh, and who on earth was the stroker? Let's find out. Ria, when we say Renaissance England, you're thinking post Italy in France, in your head, you've got lovely image of Michelangelo sort of doing art, all of the.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Turtles doing their thing. Definitely. But if you're gonna narrow it to the 1500s. And of course, you've mentioned Shakespeare. This is screaming to me, specifically Queen Elizabeth the First, because I'm not gonna give Mary that much credit for any kind of progress in the five years that she. I'm sorry, I'm just not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Dr. Alana, you've used the phrase English Renaissance. As a historian, I typically would say early modern period. So I'm curious what is. I mean, Rhea's done a pretty good. Is the English Renaissance, not the Italian Renaissance?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Okay, so you're right. What I write about is mostly the early modern period, because I wrote 16th and 17th centuries, 1500s and 1600s. But you cannot put early modern in a book like 450 times. So we just have to go with Renaissance, because that's what everybody knows.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's a great word.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's good, isn't it? And it's got a bit more sparkle to it than early modern French.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes. Renaissance.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I think the archaeologists call it post medieval, which is even worse.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's even worse. I mean, you can't trust archaeologists with anything.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No, my brother's an archaeologist, so I would know.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

We're talking about a Renaissance that arrives in England later than in Italy and in France. So it's the Tudor and Stuart eras. Yes, you know, 16th, 17th centuries. Is there a kind of commonality between European medicine and English medicine in this period?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

There really is. There's a lot of overlap. In fact, it's not very different from each other. You're right about the Catholic Church losing its power in England and so stuff starts to be more in English, but that's kind of happening all over the continent because we often think that the Church has really, really been stamping down on medicine before this and that they didn't let people do anatomies and stuff. Actually, it's not true. The Church never stopped people from doing anatomies. There weren't enough people being hanged, basically, to provide enough dead bodies that nobody would mind you anatomising. Once you have cities, you got more crime, you get more people being hanged. You also get universities, more people wanting to see the anatomies.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Alana, what does anatomise mean?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It means cutting up somebody's dead body to have a look inside.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Fair enough.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And the English doctors are going all over the continent and they're going to these new anatomy theatres in Leiden and Padua and Paris and stuff, and they're going to the hospitals as well. Paris is meant to be like the best place in Europe for hospitals. Well, not exactly the best for hospitals, but the best for having a big hospital that will let you do weird stuff to the patients.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's quite the caveat, isn't it?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Is it the best hospital? No.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. It really depends which end of the treatment you're on there. They bring that all back. There's also loads, loads of migrants coming into England and a lot of those are doctors. So a lot of people coming from Huguenot, France over here and bringing their skills with them and that's.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

How dare they arrive on boats with skills. I know, I'm outraged.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

The absolute temerity of it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And I suppose the other thing to say is this is after the printing press, right. We are post Gutenberg, so we're, we're getting the proliferation of written stuff.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, Loads and loads of books. More people who can read. Lots of people. If you can read, the chances are that you can read a bit of several different languages, Right? Yeah. So a lot of even like fairly low down medical practitioners, like the apothecaries can read a little bit of Latin as well. But obviously once you're publishing things in English, that makes a new market, which is people who haven't gone to university, they aren't physicians or anything, but they're just kind of interested and they're just buying it to have in the house. A bit like you would buy like a first aid book.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You know, we're talking here about before the discovery of microorganisms, Rhea, you know, before your specialism even exists. They haven't got microscopes just yet. Well, okay, sure they existed, but the study didn't exist.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

No.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So, you know, we're talking here about a time where the theory of medicine hasn't changed in over a thousand years. Is that fair, Alana?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Broadly, yeah. So the main thing that they believe is Galenism. It's the idea of the four humours. And there's these four humours that go around in your body and they're on this spectrum of hot, cold, wet, dry. So you have black bile, which is cold and dry, blood, which is hot and wet. You've got yellow bile, which is hot and dry and then phlegm, the most appealing humour, which is cold and wet and kind of confusingly they all also go around in the blood. So the blood that you see if you cut yourself, that's nutritive blood. But the blood that is in mixed with all those humours, that's sanguine blood. So it's slightly confusing, but it does kind of make sense. If you don't know about microorganisms and stuff. This is quite an intuitive way of viewing your body. And we still talk about like being in a good or bad humor or whatever.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, we do. And we still talk about melancholic and stuff, don't we?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I need you to go back a bit because. Okay. Blood hot and dry.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No, blood's hot and wet.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, it's wet.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah. Okay, that makes more sense.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I'll be honest.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Blood is hot and wet. Okay, I'm with you.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

That's a really good one. That's what you want?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

That's the one we want.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, that's the one that made phlegm's cold and wet.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Phlegm is cold and wet. Okay, that's like. So I'm with you so far. I'm blowing my. Like I'm living in the 1500s. I blow my nose cold and wet. I cut myself hot and wet. Then we get to black and yellow bile.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Which I'll be, you know, I know what bile is. I've never come across my own bile, like.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So where are we coming across yellow and black, which by the way, I thought was green. So.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Okay, so black bile is. Yeah, Black bile they also call melancholy.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So if somebody is kind of got like big dark circles under their eyes or they're generally of a not like black or brown skinned, but of a dark complexion, then they would be thought to have a lot of black bile.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So that's cold and dry.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yes.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So there are personality types associated to medical humoral conditions.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, very much like the phlegm people. And you will know them because the Flemish. Yeah, yeah. The people with loads of phlegm, Great chips. They act exactly like you would expect somebody with loads of phlegm to act. So they're just kind of dopey and they're a bit like a wet lettuce. And apparently they have really stinky feet.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And then those who've got yellow bile are sort of quick to temper. They're angry, they're hot headed. The melancholic people. It's fairly obvious what they are.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, they're sad.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

They're sad. And then what was the other one?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

The sanguine human.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

The sanguine, yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Saying sanguine is really good.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Jolly.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And most of the sanguine people are men. Women have more melancholy humors probably because they're being like kept inside and not allowed to do anything. But yeah, it goes with kind of types as well. So sanguine people will often have like ginger or blonde hair. They'll be quite kind of rotund and merry. It describes a lot of what the Tudors look like, which is probably not.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, my God. All of Tudor England was full of Boris Johnson.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Just the royals.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

All right, so these are ancient Greek ideas, the humoral system, the four humans. Gaelic was a Roman Greek and he was building on Hippocrates, who was a Greek. So this is ancient theory that's still in use in the 1500s and 1600s. Ria, which of the humoral profiles do you think you. You would be?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Especially after that conversation?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yellow bile.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So we've honed our sense of humours. Lol. Now let's look at the various medical professions in Renaissance England. Because there's not just one type of healthcare worker, there are, as today, there are multiple professions. So, Alana, can we start with, I suppose, the obvious ones, what we would call physicians, which I assume means doctor, but maybe it doesn't.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It pretty much does. So the physicians are doctors, but not all doctors are physicians.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's history.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's got to be diagramming my mind.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And in the Venn diagram, like, the bit of overlap is really small because the physicians are quite a small group because it's really difficult to be a physician. You have to train for about seven years. You need a university degree and then you have to get licensed by the College of Physicians. So they get this college. In 1518, they managed to get Henry VIII, say, yeah, you can be a college.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

This is a brand new. It's a new thing, a body to regulate and to administer and say, like, you've been. You're legit, you've done the training.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And then if you're in the College of Physicians, they have a bit of control over you. You know, if you do something bad, they can bring you in and say, like, why did you give that lady, like, 7 ounces of hemlock or something?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

That's a lot of hemlock.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's too much hemlock.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I mean.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. How much does it take? Time. Does it take to get that much hemlock anyway? Yeah, the physicians are really expensive, so they're only seeing, like, really quite wealthy people. It's about 10 shillings to get a physician to come out to you. And then as you go on, you get different groups. Like there's always been different groups, but they start to be more and more formalised because they have to be, because otherwise the physicians are just going to take them all over.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And so the physicians are I suppose the educated class. Right. They have to know Latin and Greek. They've got to know their Galen. They've got to know their humors.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yes. And that's kind of a problem because when they start doing anatomies and stuff, often, like, they're so wedded to Galen, they love Galen so much that they'll be anatomizing people's bodies. But looking in the Galen book and it doesn't match, and they're like, oh, God, another freak of nature. How has this happened? For the third time in a row.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So, okay, so if I'm a rich person spending my 10 shillings to get the doctor in, the physician comes around. How are they diagnosing me? What are they looking for in terms of symptoms? Things they can read.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So the physicians are really proud of their diagnostic skills. It's kind of the main thing they have that's different from everybody else. So they'll. First, they'll take a really detailed history. They'll ask you, you know, what your symptoms are, but also what you've been eating, what your relationship's like, how you sleep, how often you have sex, and they'll write all that stuff down. They also will take your pulse. And I've never quite worked out why they're doing this. They're really proud of their ability to take the pul, read it, but they never seem to actually diagnose anybody from it. The thing that they use and it's more useful to them is reading urine uroscopy. And you'll get flask of your urine and the physician will have a look at it and he'll give it a sniff and he might drink some of it. Whoa. Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, that's normal. The fastest way to tell if someone's diabetic is to taste.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Exactly. Which they call the pissing disease.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Really?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Amazing. So they're literally taking the piss.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay. Wow.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And it means that you don't need the physician right there. Because if you've gone off to your fancy country house, but the physician's in London, well, you can send your servant with a long letter and a jar of your wee to the physician. And I do wonder, like, how many servants just dropped the wee and then had to, like, pee in a vessel themselves.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That would be a classic sitcom episode, wouldn't it?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It would.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I have to refill the jar. And then the doctor's like, I'm so sorry you've got this rare disease. Are you pregnant? Yeah. Well, I mean. Okay, you seem very unperturbed about drinking Urine.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Like, we shouldn't be grossed out by urine. I mean, people were washing their clothes in it way back in.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It's a fair point, I suppose. In the 16th century, urine is a lot more utilitarian. Right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I mean, urine's probably cleaner than a lot of the water sources.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure. Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

You wash your hair in urine, you put urine in your makeup.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

But listener, please do not.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's a nice.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Don't go around drinking your own weed just because we said so.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So, yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Stick with chamomile. It looks very similar. Similar temperature.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay. So, Alana, so the doctor has diagnosed, has quaffed the urine. What are they going to recommend? They've gargled it. They've said, what a lovely vintage. What are they going to recommend? Is it diet, exercise, you know, the classic stuff?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. So about probably 80, 85% of what they recommend is going to be regimen, as they call it. So diet and what you do, but mostly diet it. So you want to rebalance whatever humor is out of whack. Let's say you've got a disease and it's being caused by melancholy. So black bile, which is cold and dry, you're going to want to eat things that are hot and wet. So the foods that are hot, it kind of makes sense. It's the things you think are hot. So red meat, salty foods, cheese, red wine.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I mean, it sounds great. More often they're telling people that they have to give up all that stuff, which they don't always like very much. And the physician's always complaining about, like, people not taking their advice.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay. And then presumably there's also things like purging.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I mean, yeah, they love a purge. So the three great remedies, as they call them, of the College of Physicians are bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. So those aren't.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Those aren't remedies. Those are symptoms.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. Very fast and loose with the word great there. But they first will purge you, probably with something to make you vomit or give you diarrhea, which can be like any kind of herbal stuff. Somebody has a purge that they said purges both ends at once. Oh, yeah, it's lovely. They can also give you really strong stuff like mercury. One of their best purges is mercury, and they use it for people who've got syphilis.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So you give the person mercury, or you, like, smear it on them, or you give it to them in a medicine and then you wrap them up in blankets and you put them in front of a fire in a room and you shut all the doors. And the idea. Sweat them out. Yeah. Is to sweat it out. And people sweat so much, and the mercury has such an effect on them that if you do this a lot of times, like, their teeth will fall out, they'll go a weird color from all the mercury inside them. It's a whole thing.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And this is a cure.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's crazy how close they are to something that's good for you, like if you just took away the mercury. It's a sauna.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Right.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's just a simple sauna treatment, and we've all enjoyed that. You know, we pay to go to a spa for the day.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Sure.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

And stick ourselves wrapped in blankets, but.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

We don't smear ourselves in heavy metal.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

We don't smear ourselves in poisonous substances first. So they were so close.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Just one tiny detail out. Yes, listeners, please.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Probably look like it works.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. Listeners, please do not take any of this as current medical advice.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Don't try this at home. Also, can we make a nod to the fact that this feels very much like the male takeover of medicine? Cause you know that maybe even a hundred years prior to that, the women were saying, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wrap you in basil, and then I'm gonna wrap you in blankets, I'm gonna shut the door, and we're gonna sweat you out with basil. And that probably. And that would have had a better effect. You know, they were using plants in nature. And actually, you know, here's a bit willow bark. Oh, my God, my pain's gone. Aspirin, you know. And then the men came in and went, no, it needs to be red meat for the black bile. Get some mercury, and it's all gone.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

We'll get to that later. You're kind of spot on, actually, with some of this stuff. You're kind of right that women's sort of roles, I think, were more important than often given credit. We'll come to that little later. The other thing I suppose we need to talk about, as well as purging the bloodletting with leeches, Blackadder was correct.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. They don't use leeches all the time. Sometimes they just cut you and let you bleed into a bowl, stab you. It just depends.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Right?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. It's what everyone knows about medicine in the past. Right. Is they have this image of bloodletting, and it's kind of true. And we have this idea that physicians love letting blood out of people and they want to do it all the time, actually. It's kind of driven by the patients. Patients want to get their bloodlet because they have the idea that if you let out some of the blood, all the bad stuff's going to go with it. And then you'll make new blood, which is good.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes. Because that's the Galenic theory, is that you make new blood through the liver and so you'll just produce new blood and then you'll be fine.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And some people are getting blood let like every six months, like you would go to the dentist. They say, whether I feel ill or not, I'm gonna let out a bowl of my blood and that's gonna keep me healthy for the summer.

[Phil Wang (Podcast Promoter)]

Wow.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And what about the menstrual cycle? I suppose, you know, if we're talking about these, that's. That's regular bleeding. That's meant to happen.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. That's nature's bloodletting.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So they are keen on that. If you are a man, so you're not getting nature's bloodletting, then you might have nosebleeds or hemorrhoids, which pretty much do the same thing.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, so hemorrhoids was like a natural?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep. And if you've got a woman and she's not menstruating, like it's a medical emergency.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And you need to let blood, probably you need to let blood from her ankles, so you draw the blood down to the right place.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay, wait, so were we doing that on women in their first trimester because we didn't know they were pregnant?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No. If they're like pregnancy age, you're like, okay, you're pregnant. But if it's somebody like postmenopausal, you know, okay, we need to let some blood out of you.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay, listen, just the fact they lived that long in the 1500s is impressive. They do.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Everyone thinks they die at like 35, but that's because all the children die.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

If you like take out that, then the average age is much higher. I mean, it's not high, but it's much higher.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You'd expect to get to your late 50s probably, wouldn't you?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And there were old people around. There were people in their 80s and 90s.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's true. I mean, actually there were quite a few people that lived to 70s and 80s in the 1800s.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, absolutely. Plenty of elderly people. But unfortunately, child mortality was so high, the mean average gets dragged way down. Alana. One famous disease that ravaged England late in this period was the plague, especially the plague of 1665. Did physicians have any Idea how to deal with it. Any protocols?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Well, a lot of the physicians just Garpa, which is.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

They just run.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, we are out of here. But the ones who are still there, they do actually have some pretty good ideas. So they put in place basically social distancing. If somebody in your family might have the plague, then the whole family has to stay inside. Kind of on pain of being very severely told off.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

They marked your house, didn't they?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And. And they say, like, if you're going in a boat, don't sit on the straw that they put in the boat because there might be bugs in it. Or if you have to go around town, don't go down alleyways where there's washing hanging out.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

This is all like good advice. Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And of course, people don't like social distancing. So there's always complaints about, you know, we told them they all had to stay in the house and they are technically in the house, but they're just hanging out of the window talking to their neighbors.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

That's interesting. So all of those things suggest that they thought it was communicated through touch rather than what it was. Once someone was infected, which was through.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

The air, they didn't really know. They knew that it was passing from person to person somehow. Sometimes they thought it was through the air, through miasma, which is like bad air.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Sure.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So bad smelling air. They believed had naturally occurring disease. Right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

That's why they wore those masks with the big noses, the big hooked noses that physicians would wear, which were quite scary. But at the end of the nose, they put a little bouquet so that they could not.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So if they went to. They hardly ever wear them.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, it's an iconic image. It's the thing that everyone thinks of as like the famous plague doctor mask.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, it's more of a thing in Italy. They don't really do it in England.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

And therefore Edinburgh because of the strong connections between Italy and Scotland. So Italy and Scotland had a great relationship going on before the English came in. Well, before Elizabeth died and then James took over England is how I learned to phrase it. And so there was a really strong medical connection between Italy and Scotland. So you see that more in the Scottish plague. That's interesting than you did in England.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

But yeah, England it is. It's a slight bit of a misnomer in England, isn't it? It's very rare. So social distancing, obviously the Italians have quarantine, which is where we get the word from, which is where you have 40 days of isolation and we get some pretty wild cures. There's a guy called George Thompson.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, George Thompson's great. He claims that he survived the plague four times, which would be amazing.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

But possible.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

But, yeah, technically possible. And they think now some people had a genetic mutation which makes them a bit more likely to survive.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

But anyway, he's a physician, but he stays in London when a load of the other physicians have left. And he's very interested in the plague. He anatomizes his neighbors, like manservant who's died of the plague. And then surprisingly, he gets the plague again. But he's got a few different cures. So he says if you can like carry gemstones about your person, they might somehow draw out the plague.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. Or the dissolved flesh of snakes. That's also good. That's good for later things.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Still doing that?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, yeah. You know, carrying crystals.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Crystals, yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Oh, wow. If you can't afford gemstones, you can do an alternative, which I haven't seen on TikTok, which is you get a toad and you stare at the toad really hard for about 15 minutes. And there's this theory that toads really hate humans and that the toad will be so pissed off by you staring at it that it will die. And then you can like dry out the toad and you can make it into pills or you can just hang it around your neck. And because of the badness that's then in the toad, it's like concentrated rage that's inside the toad. It kind of draws out the plane.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Amazing.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I see the movie now, the men who stare at toad. I mean, it's a very short movie.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And it's definitely a weird ending to Wind in the Willows, isn't it? Where toad just gets sort of stared at and dies and then is powdered. So we've got amphibian based plague cures where you get a furious toad that dies of sheer rage and then you powder it fine. Dissolved snakes and emeralds on gemstones. Fabulous. That's George Thompson. And we do have scientific progress. You talked about anatomy, which is where someone is opening up the body to look for evidence of disease. We do have a very famous anatomist, William Harvey, who does some proper science.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yes, he is a clever chap. Before this point, you talked about Galen and blood and the Galenic theory of blood is that you make blood mostly in your liver and then the heart like adds oxygen into the blood and then it kind of goes around the body, but it sort of just sloshes around the body. William Harvey he measured how much blood you could pump out of the heart. And he worked out for that to be true, you'd have to be making enormous quantities of blood from your liver every day, like multiples of what you weigh. So he's like, okay, that can't be true. So he gets ligatures and he puts them around people's arms.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So he ties off their arms.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And then he looks at what happens to the arm, and if you have the ligature really tight, the arm will go cold.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

But if you have the ligature a bit looser, the arm will go hot and fat because the arteries are further down in the body than the veins. So from there, and using, like, various weird experiments on animals, he works out that the blood does, in fact, go round and round the body.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So this is the circulatory system. He figures out that the heart pumps blood around the body. And this is.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's not completely like we would understand it now, but he's pretty close.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure. He gets the principle of it.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And this is a major revolution in the history of medicine, which is important. And to a certain extent, he's doing that because he's got a lot of bodies around, because the English Civil War, right, There's violence, there's wars, there's battles, there's dead bodies everywhere. So he's sort of going, all right, I've seen some bodies.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So are we post 1665 now?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Just before. Yeah, just before. I think a little bit before. Yeah, I think 1640s and 50s. I think the other person we need to talk about. Christopher Wren. Rhea. Do you know the name Christopher Wren?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yes, but not in the context of medicine.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Ah. That was his first great love.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Was that his first grade? Yeah, and he just turned him.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

He's dabbled in cathedrals.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

He dabbled in cathedrals?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I could do your cathedral. Yeah. But no, he's a doctor, so he. He is, you know.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Isn't that disgusting? You just, like, stick to your lane, all right? Some of us have one lane and we barely fill it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's not true. You're a comedian, virologist, a musician. You've got all sorts of lanes.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Okay, all right.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I'm trying to speak for the everyman here.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You know, I'm a podcaster, I'm a wrestler, I'm a. You know. No, no, he's a doctor and an architect and he's a scientist and he's part of the Royal Society. He's doing blood transfusion research.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, I love the blood transfusions. They do at this time, because they're just wild. Christopher Wren works out that you can basically transfuse various substances into people's veins using a quill and, like, a sheep's bladder or something. And I've seen the bit of apparatus that he makes in a museum. It is incredible that they ever managed to get anything into people's bodies. But anyway, he starts putting various things in. He's like, what happens if you give them opium or wine? You know, these various things.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Who is he doing this on? Just not volunteers, surely.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Volunteers is a strong word.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes. Patients he'd found, I guess.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And dogs.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And dogs and animals, isn't it?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay, all right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

He has problems because the dogs keep running away, as you might expect.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So he's. I mean, there's a physician called Richard Lower, or Lauer maybe, who's doing the. He performed the first dog blood transfusion. You'd hope. The only. But the first.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Oh, yeah, not the only. Once you've got a way of getting blood into an animal, then they are really keen to see what happens if you put blood from different animals into each other.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

There's, like a moment where they say, maybe we could put blood into people who've lost a lot of blood. But they almost immediately dismiss that idea and instead go down the avenue of, what happens if I put, like, the blood of a timid dog into a fierce dog? Does it make that dog more tame?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, interesting.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. Or if I put, like, a greyhound's blood into my basset hound, will it then run really fast? Robert Boyle's involved in a lot of this.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

This is basically Captain America science, isn't it? This is, how do I supercharge a nerd, a dweeb, and make him super strong?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, basically. And from the beginning, when they start doing it, you can see where it's going, which is that they want to do it on a human. Yeah. And they eventually manage to get hold of this human. They first go to Bedlam, but the keeper of Bedlam, actually, to his credit, says, no, you can't just have one of my patients.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So this is a hospital for people who are mentally unwell.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's Bethlehem, but we mostly call it Bedlam now. So they get this other guy and they put the blood of a sheep into him because the guy is supposedly mad.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Where did we get this guy if not from Bedlam?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

They pay him. Him.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, okay, yeah, sure.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

He's supposedly a bit mad, but mostly I think he just needs money.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So they give him. I think they give him maybe like 30 shillings.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I've not heard of. Oh, I guess he couldn't really just do a sperm donation to a bank. No, that's how they do it now.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

No blood donors. Yeah, yeah, no.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Okay. They put this blood of a sheep into him thinking like the sheep is nice and quiet and it kind of works. He says afterwards, oh, yeah, I feel great. Because he basically wants to get paid again and have them do it again. But at the same time, there's scientists in France doing the same thing with another guy, but they're putting calf's blood in and after a while that man dies and then it's zip.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

They then realise, hang on a second, this isn't working. Okay, so we can. I think if you're putting sheep blood into people, we can call that bad medicine. There you go. Thanks. You. That's only you. Sorry. All right, well, I've got another one now. Let's move on from the bar. Let's go for the bar bars to the barbers, because we're going to talk about the barber surgeons. Rhea, care to guess what a barber surgeon was? And the clue's in the name.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Basically, I remember that you needed to have big hands, and I don't know why barbers had to have big hands, but I knew that to be a surgeon you had to have big hands because you wanted to be able to grip. Like later in the 1800s you wanted big hands to play Rachmaninoff, but in this time you wanted big hands to be able to grip the arteries on both sides of the thigh with one hand so that you could stem the bleeding while you sawed off the leg. Was hair particularly coarse back then?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, it's a good question. I've had expensive haircuts, but this could cost you an arm and a leg, literally. Right.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

They're just flowing.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I'm loving starts off with the barbers and for ages they're called the company of Barber Surgeons, because the barbers back in medieval times, they sung lovely songs, didn't they? Can you imagine four part harmonies while.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Sawing away, while screaming?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And so the barbers, they are pretty handy with a razor. And the monks that were doing most of the medicine back in the medieval period are not actually supposed to spill blood. So they get the barbers in to do.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, but beer was okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Wow.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The standards, the double standards.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

And then eventually some of the barbers, they're pretty much just working as surgeons and they decide, okay, we should formalize this. And they get their company of barber surgeons in 1534. So there's this picture of Henry VIII handing over a charter to this company, while the physicians stand on his other side looking like they've swallowed a bee. And then they decide, okay, now we've kind of divvied it up. The surgeons are going to do the surgery and the barbers are going to cut their hair and never the twain shall meet.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And then, of course, they are doing some surgeries of a sort. I mean, the bloodletting is surgery, right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's, you know, they're doing lots of surgeries. We always think that they're either letting blood or they're hacking someone's leg off that is already kind of dangling off. But actually, they do a lot of amputations, but they also do operations for kidney and bladder stones. They do mastectomies.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, it's horrible.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I mean, hernias, fistulas, cataracts, so external surgeries, I suppose, things. Yeah, I mean, cataracts.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I know what that is.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, no, I mean. Oh, they're just plucking that out, aren't they?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Kidney stones, bladder stones. Must be agonizing because there's no pain, really.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No, it's bad.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And Obviously this, the 16th and 17th century in England is a time of war, of battles, of civil wars in the 17th century, of course. So you've got loads and loads of people going to war and horrible injuries. So this is also a time of prosthesis, of fake false legs, false eyes, of false noses, ears stitched to hats, which I love. So you put the hat down and suddenly you've got ears attached, which is amazing. We should bring those back. But we need to move on to a different discipline, which is the apothecary. I mean, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but these are pharmacists.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, basically. So they come from the pepperers and the spicers, who are medieval.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Because.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Could you say those two words again?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Pepperers and spices. I'd love to be. So they import pepper and spices?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Pepperers and spicers.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And they basically are pharmacists. What they're supposed to do is fill the prescriptions that the physicians write. What they actually do is they do that, but they also sell their own medicines and they do a bit of their own medical practice.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So they diagnose, they sell. They've got their own little shops maybe.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

You know, there's loads of them.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. And there's. I mean, there's loads of them in London, isn't there? We know it's like, one for every 2,000 people. And this is a big city.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So there's a lot of apothecary. Apothecary is how we pronounce it.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Apothecary.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, Apothecary. It's quite hard to say. And when the physicians do a runner during the plague, the apothecaries stay, right?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yes, most of them stay. And sometimes they're actually filling in for the physicians at the hospital.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Tremendously brave.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, they are brave. I think they're more embedded in their communities than the physicians are.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And the most famous one, I suppose, would be Nicholas Culpepper, who is amazing, does work with the poor, often does incredibly sort of, you know, really generous work, and also writes one of the most popular medicine books of all time.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, it's still in print. It's had more editions than Grey's Anatomy.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Wait, what's it called? What's it called?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I'm buying Culpepper's Herbal.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Culpepper's Herbal.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Culpepper's Herbal, yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

He's a sort of huge name, and he's a sort of good guy. He's community work and, you know, during the plague and everything. Amazing. So, yes, we could see him doing sort of sarcastic commentaries on, you know, TikTok videos now these days.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay, dumb question, but was he called Culpepper coincidentally, and he becomes an apothecary, or does he come from a long line of pepperers?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

No, he's from a long line of vicars.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, Vickers.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

But he's like, my name is Culpepper. I must pepper. I must. The clue is in the name.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Brilliant love. I mean, it was like.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. I mean, talk about calling nominative determinism. Yeah. Okay, so we've discussed legit medical professionals. We've got physicians, apothecaries, we've got, you know, barber surgeons, but we've also got some slightly dodgier quacks. I'm gonna use the word quack. Rhea, what do you think the stroker did as a service?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay, this is a family show, so. Not that the stroker. The stroker. What can you stroke? Okay, so far, Okay, I think the stroker. I keep thinking too far forward into the 1800s, and there were a lot of things that doctors did for women that could come under the stroking umbrella, which. But we're not there yet. Okay, so does the stroker do some kind of something that calms the nervous system, like literally stroking? They don't realize that that's what they're doing by calming people down.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It's a good guess and very, very elegantly put. Well done for Radio 4. Alana, who is the stroker and what does he do?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

So the stroker is a guy called Valentine. Great Ray.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

What a name.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I know.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I mean, you start with a good.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Name and then you get an even better nickname. He is Irish. He's essentially a faith healer and he comes over from Ireland in 1665 and the way he treats people is that, say you've got a headache, he'll start, he'll kind of stroke your head and then he'll stroke like maybe down to your fingertips and the headache comes out at your fingertips. Oh, yeah, he's incredibly popular.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

He calms your nervous system. That's what happens.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, my gosh.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So it's sort of massage or is it just sort of. It's more.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It's sort of feathery stroking.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Feathery stroking.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It's Irish Reiki. Does he also speak in his Irish accent? Because I'll be honest, if I had a migraine and someone just talked to me in that beautiful lilt, I think it would go as well.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, maybe.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I mean, presumably he is Irish, so.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And we would call him a quack. What does quack mean? In a historical term, the word quack.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Comes from the word quack salva, which is a Dutch word for somebody who sells ointments by boasting about their medical credentials.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Right, okay, so someone with a bit of, kind of a little bit of showmanship. Razzmatazz. Buy my stuff, it'll cure you.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

What was the Dutch word?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Quak Salva.

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[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

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[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Aw.

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[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

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[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

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[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

See terms.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So we've got male surgeons, male physicians, male quacks. But Rio, you brought up women earlier, which I think a sort of notable point. And I think, Alana, we need to talk about the fact that women were hugely involved in healthcare.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I suspect they were hugely involved in Culpepper's herbal.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Maybe.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of what Culpepper puts in the herbal, he's just cribbed from women.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, we always talk about the physicians and the surgeons and stuff because they're the ones that left a lot of writings. But the vast majority of medical treatment is being administered by women. Kind of noble women or women of the kind of middling class who give medicines to their servants and their families and their neighbours. And they do like extraordinary medicine. They do all the kind of basically giving you a hot toddy type medicine, but they also, some of them will do bits of surgery, like treat quite serious illnesses.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The noble women will do this. That's fascinating. Not like in my picture. In my head, I picture the noblewoman living in her manor. But then it's gonna be like the village herbalist that comes in and does all the midwifery.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

But you're Saying the noblewomen, they've got money and they're bored witless and they're.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Clever and they're quite well educated. So they.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Presumably.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. Okay.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Amazing.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So actually, you know, in a local village, you've got your squire who's got some land and everything else. And it might be his wife that is the nurse of the town.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow. And one of the most famous women of this era would be Hannah Woolley.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, Hannah Woolley is kind of like Martha Stewart or someone like that. So she's not noble. She pulls herself up basically by her bootstraps. Her husband dies and she needs to make some money. So she does one of the first commercial remedy books and it's really, really popular and she ends up publishing loads of these.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So it's. Her and Culpepper are sort of the kind of best selling medical books of the time, I suppose.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And a lot of. There's not really copyright in this period.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So a lot of the Medicare now, is there? AI companies. Boo. Anyway, sorry.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

A lot of the medicines appear across like numerous sectors.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure. Okay, rhe important question. What was cock? Water.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay. Because this is a family friendly radio show, I'm gonna assume you're spelling caulk. C A, U, L, K. Oh, beautiful. And it's mineral water or something chalky or.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

No, it's. It's spelled C O C K. Is it? Okay. Water.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I tried to lift this program up out of the gutter and you keep bringing it back.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You're a classy lady and I've. I've dragged it down again. Alana, what is.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Water is a cure all medicine for fevers and things. You make it by mashing up a cockerel and then you distill the water from the cockerel with raisins. The milk of a red cow and ambergris.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And ambergris is whale phlegm, right?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

It is, yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Hyper expensive. Incredibly expensive.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Hard to find.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Hard to find because you need whale to literally wash up on the beach.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Sometimes just the ambergris will wash up on the beach.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, beautiful.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. And it's for fevers and things.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay. Oh, so it's like cow pole kind of.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It sounds like chicken soup. It's cream of chicken soup. Let's be honest. I mean, we've all been fed that when we were ill. Sure.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And it makes us feel better, doesn't it?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

So sorry. It was a cow as red as milk, a chicken as red as blood. What was the recipe? Chicken milk from a red cow.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep. Raisins Ambergris.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah, and ambergris.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Another one.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Of course, there's other stuff in it.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

As well, you know. I'm sorry, I know that we say raisins and we go, sure, raisins, yeah. You know, we all think, ooh, that lovely California treat in the little red box. But we're talking 1600s here, where. These grape grapes are still in Italy, aren't they?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

They're shipped in. They're shipped in. They're dried raisins. So you can transport them.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Shipping them in.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You're shipping them in.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I'm not giving them enough credit.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

The other cures, of course, would be oil of frog.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oil of frog.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oil of frog and puppy water. I don't want to ask.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Puppy water can either be puppy wee or water in which you've boiled a puppy.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, come on. Come on. All right. Well, as a BBC program, I, once again, stress, please do not go around boiling frogs or puppies. Right, moving on. We've mentioned midwives very briefly, Alana. This is a hugely important part of healthcare and medicine. Does the midwifery world have a college? Are they official physicians? You know, are they treated that way? What is their training?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Midwifery is a funny profession because some of the midwives are professional midwives. They're making all their money from it. They do a lot. Lot of births. And some of the midwives are like your auntie that has seven kids. So there's always mostly men trying to get them to make it more formal, but they're quite resistant to it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

And the most famous one, I suppose, in this era would be Jane Sharp.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, Jane Sharp's great. We hardly know anything about her as a person. She's kind of mysterious, but she writes this big midwifery book. It's like 400 pages, but it's really good selling and it's very frank about everything, which I think is why people bought it. It's also got really detailed pictures of all the different sort of presentations that can go wrong. So baby's got his arm stuck the.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wrong way or breech birth and that sort of thing. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating read, and I suppose we should talk a little bit about general beliefs about women's bodies in this era. So in the 16th 17th century, Rhea, a mini quiz for you. Which of these was not believed at the time? So, number one, one, unborn babies would breathe through the woman's vagina. Two, the womb could move around inside a woman's body and had to be coaxed back into place with Delicious smells. Three babies with longer umbilical cords had longer penises. Or four, the womb continued to live after a woman had died. Which of those not true.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I'm gonna go with number three. Umbilical cord of penis length. Because you could just eyeball that. Because I know the womb traveling around your body, that was a thing. They're just like, come back, come back, come back down. They would kind of like soothe it back into place. The breathing through the vagina kind of makes logical sense. You know, nothing about the inside. And what was the last one again?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

The last one was that the womb continued to live after.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah, and that one, I'm gonna say. I still think some people in the US Believe because they do not see us as people, they see us as walking incubators. So I'm gonna go with number three.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I mean, you are correct to go for three as one. That might seem outlandish. They're all true. I lied to.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Can I just say, all of the men I date have incredibly long umbilical cords.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Still. Now that's weird science.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Science, isn't it? Can't argue with the facts.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay, well, sorry for lying to you there, Rhea. Obviously, you know, you trusted me and I betrayed you. But, you know, comedy show, so what you gonna do?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

You're a man.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So, Alana, midwives, were they allowed to practice in peace or as Rhea had sort of suggested earlier, did men sort of go, this is a job for a man. This is my field of medicine. Do we get a sense here of male medicine muscling in on midwifery?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. The worst offenders are this family called the Chamberlains that I mentioned earlier. They get very into midwifery, but people aren't really that interested because the women are doing a perfectly good job of it. But they have this thing that they call the secret. And they won't tell anyone what it is, obviously, because they want to, say, sell it. And they turn up to birth, they take like a big box in. They'll be in the birthing chamber, blindfold the woman, ring bells and stuff. They want everyone to think that they have this massive piece of machinery. Actually, once they kind of give up on the whole project after about 100 years, it turns out what they have is the forceps.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, right.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

On the one hand, I am so angry right now. I wondered whether we would get into the number of bits of machinery that men invented for childcare purposes. And, oh, if you. The depths of depravity, they're just. It's angering. It really is.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So one family controlled the forcep industry.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep. And then eventually they found them under the floorboards of this guy's house. He buried them there to keep them safe.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It's a family secret. Oh, goodness me. So men sort of muscled in and invented new technology or so on. And midwifery itself, they haven't really changed.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The design of forceps, you know, they were. So I've had a forcep delivery. My first kid was a forcep delivery. And it really is about treating the woman as meat in order to get the baby out. And the damage that's done to the woman because of the design of forceps is horrific in a lot of situations. And it's. And I. You know, and it's because it was designed by people for other people, so the people who designed it were never going to be the recipients of it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Well, I'm sorry, you had experience?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

No, no. Kid's great. So I kept the kid.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Love the kid.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Good. Glad to hear that. But, yeah, absolutely. Alana, Obviously, the Chamberlain family with their forceps, what came before that?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Before that, if the baby got really stuck, there was basically nothing you could do. And if you got to the point where you thought that the baby had died in the mother, the surgeon would be called in and they would use various horrible instruments, including a kind of great big hook to extract it from the woman.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Midwives. Were they ever regulated? Have midwives ever. I mean, of course they're regulated now. Of course they are. But were they in the historical period? We're talking about the 16th century, 17th century.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. The physicians and the surgeons, they really wanted to regulate them, and they kept trying to do it, but basically they never succeeded. It wasn't actually legally required for midwives to have training until 1902.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

After Queen Victoria.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yep.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Goodness me. Extraordinary. Okay, so the company of surgeons. Company of The Company of physicians was 15, 18 and 1902 for the company of Midwives.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow. Okay. Rhea, We've been on quite a journey.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I think that's a testament to how much you can trust women. It's the fact that it wasn't until men muscled their way in that we finally went, okay, we should regulate this. But when women did it by themselves, we were like, they're fine, they're fine. People are being born, People are standing up afterwards, walking around after childbirth. There's no need to regulate this. Then the Chamberlains come in and they went, oh, no, maybe we should. Maybe. Maybe we should regulate.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Ah, it's quite the story, though, isn't the history of medicine in this period. Rhea, it's incredible. Who would you have trusted with your healthcare in this period? If you were there back then? Would you have gone with the.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, I'm going with Jane sharp.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, probably wise sharp.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Who knows what a breech birth looks like? I'm like, I trust you. Maybe. Maybe the noble woman in the area. Yeah.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Hannah Woolley. Yeah. Or maybe.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Yeah, but Hannah woolly wasn't noble. But I'll trust Hannah Woolley too.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay, fair enough. But you're not going with the chamberlains.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I'm very much not going with the chamber.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Okay, the nuance window. Okay, it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Rhea and I sit quietly mixing our herbal cures for two minutes while Dr. Alana takes center stage to tell us something we need to know about renaissance medicine in England. My stopwatch is ready, so take it away.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Dr. Alana, can I just get a cup of hot urine while we listen?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You may. You may. Okay, Alana, you've got two minutes. Off you go.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Okay, so there's this big emphasis on the market. And this is what I usually talk about is that commercialization is driving medical specialism and driving people to get better at medicine. But we also have to remember that this is the birth of a lot of the public health that we now know. So we've seen the plague, and you have public health measures there, but we also have things like welfare because after the dissolution of the monasteries, the monasteries, who've been looking after people, they can't do that anymore. And there's kind of chaos for about 70 years. And then Elizabeth, as in Elizabeth I, recognizes that she needs to bring in an act for the welfare of maimed soldiers because there's so many wars, There are so many people with disabilities coming home. And that act gets tinkered with with over the next 300 years. It's basically the origins of the welfare system. The other thing we have is hospitals, and that's again driven by war because the civil wars, you need hospitals for people. It's a whole propaganda thing of who has the best hospitals. So you get more hospitals being used as training centers and more hospitals in general. So at the end of the 17th century, you get new hospitals or expansions of hospitals like Chelsea, St. Thomas, Guy's, Westminster. They're all produced during that period. So we have quite a lot of hangover from that time in the good as well as the horrible stuff that we always think about.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's amazing. Thank you so much.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Wow.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I forgot that about the monks. The monks were the welfare system. You know, if you were tired or hungry, you know, they would take in the poor and they would, you know, you know, feed them up, send them on their way. So when Henry got rid of them, them, we lost our. Basically our mental health support network.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Completely dismantled the health system.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes. Just so he could marry the lady he then executed. Classic Henry. Yes. I mean, the dissolution of the monasteries, Listener, if you don't know, is. Yeah. Henry viii, switching the faith of England from Catholicism to his own personal religion, the Church of England, where he's in charge and taking all the land and all them on the street. So, thank you so much, Alana, that's fascinating. So healthcare sort of returns under Elizabeth I. She went, actually, we need these institutions.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. I mean, healthcare's a strong word. Okay. But kind of not throwing rocks at the disabled. That's.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I've got an idea for a policy. Instead of throwing rocks at the disabled.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah. If they go back to their home parish, the home parish now has to do something to try and take care of them.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Gotcha. Okay.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, so that just became a law.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, so were home parishes literally kicking out their disabled and going, go to the next parish?

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Yeah, that's where we get passports from, because it's the pass that lets you get through the port and then, like, through the country and back to your home village or whatever. Because otherwise being a vagrant was illegal.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Wow.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Huh.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

So what do you know now? Well, it's time now for the. So what do you know now? This is our quickfire quiz for Dr. Rhea to see how much she has learned. Rhea, you seem to have known quite a lot coming into this. We've had a lovely chat.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

We have.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

This has been amazing and you're good at these quizzes.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Typically, we've covered a lot of ground.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

You've got a lot of notes there. How many pages are we looking?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

6.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

This is so much better than my students.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

We've got 10 questions for you. Okay. Let's see how you do. So question 1. What professional medical body was founded in 1518?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The Royal College of Physicians.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It was. Well. Well done. Number two. Name one diagnostic test a physician might carry out on a patient.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Just the one.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Okay. They might test your urine by sniffing it or drinking it.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Quaffing it.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Quaffing.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

A cup of coffee. Yeah. Question 3. Which animal's blood did Richard Lower transfuse into a human volunteer in 1667?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

A dog.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

It was a sheep, actually. It was a sheep. Yeah, I think.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, no, you're right, sorry. Richard Lower did the first dog blood transfusion but put sheep blood into his non bedlam volunteer.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Paid volunteer. Yes.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Whereas in France they did it with calves.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes. I'll give you half a point there. Cause that's some good knowledge. But you can get the answer straight away. Question 4. Which group performed the majority of medical care in Renaissance England? And when I say group, the majority. When I say group, which gender?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, men.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

World. Age?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Well, women. Well, hang on a second. We started way back at the beginning with all physicians are doctors, but not all doctors are physicians.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's right.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

My answer would have been doctors. But we didn't cover women really till the end. And then we covered them very specifically as midwives.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's a fair point.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Carries. Also, as you said, there was like 1 to 2000. So there's multiple answers to this question.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

I'm going to give you a point for that because that's a fair critique of our system. You've undermined the question writing, so I'll give you the point. Question 5. What was the nickname of the Irish quack, Dr. Valentine Greatrakes, who captured the English attention in 1660?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

The stroker. I don't know what accent that was.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

I'm sorry.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I tried to do Irish and I failed. Mistakes.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That was more Bram Stoker. Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I apologize to all of Ireland. The stroker.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Question 6. What was cock water?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Not what I said it was. It was basically cream of chicken soup. You had to put some cock in there, as in chicken. And then milk from a red cow. Some raisins.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. Bit of ambergris. Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Bit of ambergris.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. Very good.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

If you could get your hands on her.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah. Question seven. Can you name two. Two types of surgery that were performed in Renaissance England?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Well, there was bloodletting.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yes.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

If we count that as a surgery. Very minor surgery.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Sure.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Bloodletting. And shall we go with bladder stone removal?

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah, let's.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Samuel Papes.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Because it's absolutely horrifying, isn't it? Yes. He could have had fractures, but he survived. He did mastectomies too. Hernias, fistulas, amputations. All sorts of horrible, horrible stuff. Question 8. Who was Hannah Woolley?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, Hannah Woolley was not known.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

No.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

But she did end up writing a very commercial remedy book, which probably overlapped a lot with Culpepper's book.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Very good. Question 9. What strange belief did people have about wombs in Renaissance England?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Oh, so many. So many weird things. One, that the womb traveled around the body, which probably was a precursor to women being hysterical in the 1800s if they were hysterical. Your womb was too high in your body.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's where the word comes from.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Hysteria.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Also that it lived beyond the woman.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That's very good. Very good. Excellent. And this for nine and a half, a half out of ten, which 17th century book written by a public spirited apothecary is perhaps the most popular medical text of all time.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Culpeppers Herbal.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Nine and a half out of ten. Very good.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

I'm annoyed about that dog one.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Well, I mean, I think you did very well. I think you did, you know, really well because you got, you know, dog was correct. It wasn't into the patient. It was patient.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It was the first dog transfusion.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

But I mean, very, very impressive.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

You wouldn't put it past them.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

No. Thank you so much, Rhea and Listener. If you want more from Rhea, check out our episodes on Chung Yi Sao, the amazing pirate Qu, the most successful pirate of all time. And of course, our episode on Marco Polo. And for more on the history of health and wellness, we have episodes on ancient medicine, Renaissance beauty in Italy and the Kellogg brothers. They were fun. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to youo're Dead to me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner we have the amazing Dr. Alana Skus from the University of Reading. Thank you, Alana.

[Dr. Alana Skous (Historian, Associate Professor)]

Thank you.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Pleasure to have you here. And in Comedy Corner we have the brilliant Rialina. Dr. Rialina. Thank you, Rhea.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Pleasure as always. See me afterwards for that round.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Oh, thank you. Puppy Water, is it? Oh, no. And to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we restore another languishing historical topic back to full health. But for now, I'm off to go and launch my new wellness brand, Leeches for Life. I'm gonna be rich. Bye. Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Katherine Russell. It was written by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Nagus and me. The audio producer was Steve Hanke and our production coordinator was Jill Huggett. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Nagus. And our executive editor was Philip Sellers.

[Phil Wang (Podcast Promoter)]

Hi, I'm Phil Wang and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast. Podcasts that you've listened to or are going to listen to, but nonetheless, I'm talking about another podcast that you should also definitely listen to. The podcast I'm talking about is Comedy of the Week, which takes choice episodes from BBC sitcoms, sketch shows, podcasts, and panel shows, including my own show, Unspeakable, and puts them all into one podcast. Maybe I'll trail this podcast on that podcast. Who's to say I'll do what I like. Listen to Comedy of the Week now on BBC Sounds Podcast.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?

[Advertiser Voice]

Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

You can really have it delivered or pick it up, Mommy. I think kid is walking up the slide.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Really?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Autotrader, Buy your car online?

[Advertiser Voice]

Really?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

From GEICO Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing thoughts broadcasting from your podcast brain. Tonight's top worry. If something happens to your apartment and you need to, like, stay in a hotel and pay for it. That would be crazy, right? Art Palpitations has more.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

That would be crazy, Tammy.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

But you got surprisingly affordable renters insurance.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Through GEICO so it could be covered, giving you peace of mind.

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

Aw, I love a story that ends well.

[Greg Jenner (Host, Historian)]

Next up, love stories. Are they all they're cracked up to be?

[Dr. Rhea (Comedian and Virologist)]

It feels good to worry less. It feels good to Geico.