Renaissance Medicine (Radio Edit)

Summary

You're Dead to Me – "Renaissance Medicine (Radio Edit)"

BBC Radio 4, May 8, 2026
Host: Greg Jenner
Guests: Dr. Alana Skuse (History Corner), Dr. Ria Lina (Comedy Corner)

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Overview

In this engaging episode, host Greg Jenner embarks on an exploration of Renaissance-era medicine in 16th and early 17th-century England. Joining him are historian Dr. Alana Skuse, specialist in early modern medical history, and comedian Dr. Ria Lina, who brings her unique perspective as a virologist-turned-comic. The trio unpacks the medical professions, beliefs, remedies, and social dynamics of the period—balancing historical insight and sharp wit.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Medicine in ‘Renaissance’ England

• Delayed Renaissance: England’s Renaissance trailed behind Italy and France (04:19), with less scientific progress than its continental neighbours.
• Medicine’s Continuity: Core medical theory (Galenism) had been unchanged for a millennium. The four humours—black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm—dominated thinking. (06:49)
  • Each humour was associated with hot/cold and wet/dry qualities.
  • Diagnosis and treatment were all about balancing these humours.

“This is quite an intuitive way of viewing your body. And we still talk about being in a good or bad humour.”
– Dr. Alana Skuse (07:18)

2. The Professions: Physicians, Surgeons, Apothecaries, and Quacks

Physicians

• Elite, university-trained, licensed by the College of Physicians (founded 1518). (08:18)
• Served mainly the wealthy due to high fees—about 10 shillings a visit.
• Diagnosis via detailed patient history, checking pulse (of questionable diagnostic value), and especially uroscopy (urine inspection, tasting, sniffing). (09:11)

“I've never quite worked out why they're [physicians] doing this [taking the pulse]. They're really proud of their ability... but they never seem to actually diagnose anybody from it.”
– Dr. Alana Skuse (09:11)

• Treatments centered on dietary regimens and “the three great remedies”: bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea (purging). (10:42, 11:23)
• Bloodletting, with or without leeches, was commonplace and often patient-driven. (11:55)

Surgeons and Barber-Surgeons

• Originally barbers, their expertise with razors was co-opted because of religious proscriptions against clerical blood-letting. (15:01)
• Performed practical procedures: bloodletting, amputations, wound care, especially needed during wars.
• Barbers and surgeons later became distinct professions.
• Prosthetics and creative “repairs” for wounded soldiers included false limbs and ears stitched to hats. (15:36)

“I've had expensive haircuts, but this could cost you an arm and a leg, literally.”
– Greg Jenner (14:28)

Apothecaries

• Evolved from “pepperers and spicers” (importers of spices/medicinals). Their role grew into that of the pharmacist, filling prescriptions and selling their own remedies. (16:08)
• Often provided medical advice and self-diagnosis, especially for the poor.
• Notable figure: Nicholas Culpepper, who authored “Culpepper’s Herbal”, still in print centuries later. (16:58)

Quacks and Faith Healers

• “Quack” derives from the Dutch quacksalva (“someone who sells ointments by boasting about their credentials”). (21:14)
• Colourful example: Valentine Greatrakes, “the stroker”, an Irish faith healer who claimed to cure with gentle stroking. (20:25)

“He’ll start… stroking your head… Then he’ll stroke down to your fingertips, and the headache comes out at your fingertips.”
– Dr. Alana Skuse (20:22)

3. Women's Roles in Medicine

• Women, especially of the nobility and ‘middling’ class, were major healthcare providers within their communities. (21:41)
  • Dispensed medicines, performed home remedies, sometimes undertook minor surgeries.
  • Many famous remedy books, and much knowledge, cribbed from women’s traditions (ex: Culpepper’s Herbal). (21:46)
• Commercial success: Hannah Woolley published popular remedy books and was compared to a “Martha Stewart” of her age. (22:52)

4. Medical Mysteries and Wild Remedies

• Renaissance medicine was replete with bizarre concoctions:
  • Cock Water: A fever cure made by boiling a cockerel with raisins, milk of a red cow, and ambergris (whale phlegm). (24:01)
  • Oil of Frog & Puppy Water: The latter could involve boiling a puppy (!). (24:36)
• The hosts remind listeners not to try these at home.

“Please do not go around boiling frogs or puppies!”
– Greg Jenner (24:46)

5. Midwifery and Childbirth

• Midwives operated as both professionals and experienced family/community members, often resisting formal regulation by male-dominated colleges. (25:10)
• Noteworthy figure: Jane Sharp, whose best-selling midwifery book was frank and comprehensive, replete with illustrations of difficult births. (25:33)

Misconceptions About Women’s Bodies

• Wild beliefs included:
  1. Unborn babies breathe through the mother’s vagina,
  2. The womb could wander through a woman’s body,
  3. The womb continues to live after death,
  4. Umbilical cord length corresponds to penis size. (mini-quiz at 26:08)

“They would kind of, like, soothe it [the womb] back into place.”
– Dr. Ria Lina (26:15)

6. The “Nuance Window” – Renaissance Public Health Foundations (28:26)

Dr. Alana Skuse delivers a focused reflection:

• Commercialization of medicine led to greater specialization.
• After the dissolution of the monasteries (which had provided care for the poor), England’s welfare safety net collapsed. Reconstruction under Elizabeth I led to the first legislation for maimed soldiers—a precursor to the modern welfare state. (28:26)
• Hospitals expanded, often driven by war needs and competition, forming the backbone of UK’s eventual health system.

“This is the birth of a lot of the public health that we now know… The origins of the welfare system.”
– Dr. Alana Skuse (28:26)

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Memorable Quotes

• On humours:
  “Phlegm, the most appealing humour, which is cold and wet.”
  – Dr. Alana Skuse (06:49)

• On urine analysis:
  “We shouldn’t be grossed out by urine. I mean, people were washing their clothes in it way back in the day.”
  – Dr. Ria Lina (10:01)

• On women and medical knowledge:
  “We always talk about the physicians and the surgeons and stuff… but the vast majority of medical treatment is being administered by women.”
  – Dr. Alana Skuse (21:46)

• On wild cures:
  “Cock water… 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… It’s for fevers and things.”
  – Dr. Alana Skuse (24:01)

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Timeline of Notable Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Discussion | |-----------|---------------------| | 03:55 | Renaissance arrives late in England — context setting | | 06:49 | Overview of Galenism & humours | | 08:18 | Regulation and exclusivity of physicians | | 09:11 | Diagnostic methods (urine analysis) | | 10:42 | Treatment methods (“three great remedies”) | | 11:55 | Bloodletting, leeches, and patient-driven treatment | | 12:24 | William Harvey and the discovery of blood circulation | | 14:01 | Barber-surgeons — origins and roles | | 16:08 | Apothecaries & Culpepper’s Herbal | | 19:44 | Quacks and faith healing (Valentine Greatrakes) | | 21:36 | Women’s crucial role in healthcare | | 22:52 | Hannah Woolley and the rise of commercial remedy books | | 24:01 | Wild Renaissance-era medicines (“cock water”, oil of frog) | | 25:10 | Midwifery, regulation, and Jane Sharp | | 26:08 | Beliefs about women’s bodies — mini quiz | | 28:26 | Nuance Window: Rise of welfare and public health | | 30:13 | Dissolution of the monasteries — social impact |

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Final Thoughts

This episode balances deep historical knowledge with lively banter and pointed modern reflections. By highlighting both mainstream and marginal figures—physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, “quacks”, and women—the conversation reveals an era teetering between tradition and transformation. Woven throughout is a thread of skepticism for medical dogma and delight in the resourcefulness (and sometimes absurdity) of early modern healthcare—delivered in true You're Dead to Me style.

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For further episodes exploring medical history:

• Ancient Medicine
• Renaissance Beauty in Italy
• The Kellogg Brothers

[See also: Episodes on Ching Shih, Marco Polo]

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual.

[C]

Even if it means sitting front row

[B]

at a comedy show.

[C]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is first date?

[B]

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[C]

Me to a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[B]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. 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, 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. And 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 Skus. Welcome, Alana.

[D]

Hello. Nice to be here.

[B]

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. Ria.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[C]

I do, from my sins. I have a PhD in herpes. That's my specialty.

[B]

The classic route into comedy.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[C]

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.

[B]

But.

[C]

So I'm excited.

[B]

Good.

[C]

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?

[B]

It's the 1500s.

[C]

The 1500s.

[B]

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

[C]

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 thing. 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.

[B]

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.

[D]

But.

[B]

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. Rhea, when we say Renaissance England, you're thinking post Italy and France. In your head, you've got a lovely image of Michelangelo sort of doing arts,

[C]

all of the turtles doing their thing. Definitely.

[B]

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?

[D]

There really is. There's a lot of overlap. In fact, it's not very different from each other. 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, like, 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.

[B]

Alana, what does anatomise mean?

[D]

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

[B]

Fair enough.

[D]

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, and they bring that all back. There's also 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.

[C]

How dare they arrive on boats with skills.

[D]

I know.

[C]

I'm outraged.

[D]

The absolute temerity of it.

[B]

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

[D]

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, yellow bile, which is hot and dry, and then phlegm, the most appealing humour, which is cold and wet. 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 humour or whatever.

[B]

Rhea, which of the humoral profiles do

[C]

you think you would be, especially after that conversation?

[D]

Yellow bile.

[B]

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.

[D]

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

[B]

Oh, yeah, okay.

[D]

Yeah. It's history.

[C]

It's got to be Venn diagram diagramming my mind.

[D]

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 de 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.

[B]

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.

[D]

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

[C]

That's a lot of hemlock.

[B]

That's too much hemlock.

[C]

I mean.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

How much does it. Time does it take to get that much analog? 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.

[B]

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

[D]

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. They'll take a really detailed history what your symptoms are, but also what you've been eating, what your relationship's like, how you sleep, how often you have sex. 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 pulse, 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.

[C]

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

[D]

Exactly.

[B]

I mean. Okay, you seem very unperturbed about drinking urine.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Urine's probably cleaner than a lot of the water sources.

[B]

Sure. Okay.

[D]

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

[B]

But listener, please do not. Don't go around drinking your own weed just because we said so.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[D]

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, so you want to rebalance whatever humour 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.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

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.

[B]

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

[D]

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.

[B]

Those aren't remedies, those are symptoms.

[D]

Yeah, very fast and loose with the word great there.

[B]

The other thing I suppose we need to talk about, as well as purging, the bloodletting with leeches. Blackadder was correct.

[D]

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

[B]

Right.

[D]

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. It's kind of driven by the patients. Patients want to get their blood let 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.

[B]

We do have scientific progress. And, you know, 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.

[D]

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.

[B]

So he ties off their arms.

[D]

Yeah. And then he looks at what happens to the arm, and if you have the ligature really tight, the arm will go cold. But if you have the ligature a bit looser, the arm will go hot and fat because the arteries are further tight 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.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

Sure. He gets the principle of it.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

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.

[C]

So are we post 1665 now, just before.

[B]

Yeah, just before. I think a little bit before. Yeah, I think it's 1640s and 50s. I think 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.

[C]

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?

[B]

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

[D]

Ah, it's good. It 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

[C]

sawing away, while screaming?

[D]

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.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

So they get the barbers in to do.

[C]

Oh, but beer was okay.

[D]

Wow.

[C]

The standards, the double standards.

[D]

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 the 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.

[B]

And obviously, 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 prestig of false legs, of 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.

[D]

I think I'm an elf.

[B]

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.

[D]

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

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Because.

[C]

Could you say those two words again?

[D]

Pepperers and spices. They import pepper and spices.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[D]

Y.

[C]

Spices.

[D]

Yeah. And they basically have 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.

[B]

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

[D]

You know, there's loads of them.

[B]

Yeah. And there's. I mean, there's. 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.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So there's a lot of apothecary. Apothecary is how we pronounce apothecary. Yeah, apothecary. It's quite hard to say. 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.

[D]

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

[B]

Wow.

[C]

Wait, what's it called?

[D]

I'm buying Culpepper's Herbal.

[B]

Culpepper's Herbal.

[C]

Culpepper's Herbal, yeah.

[E]

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[B]

So we've discussed legit medical professionals. We've got physicians, apothecaries, we've got barber surgeons. But we've also got some slightly dodg quacks. I'm using the word quack. Rhea, what do you think the stroker did as a service?

[C]

Okay, this is a family show, so not that the stroker. 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 is this 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.

[B]

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

[D]

So the stroker is a guy called Valentine Greatrakes.

[B]

What a name.

[D]

I know.

[C]

I mean, you start with a good

[D]

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.

[C]

He calms your nervous system. That's what he does. Oh, my gosh.

[B]

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

[D]

It's more like feathery stroking.

[B]

Feathery stroking.

[C]

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.

[B]

Yeah, maybe.

[D]

I mean, presumably he is Irish, so.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

Right, okay. So someone with a bit of. Kind of a little bit of showmanship. Rathmataz. Buy my stuff, it'll cure you.

[C]

What was the Dutch word?

[D]

Quacksalva.

[B]

So we've got male surgeons, male physicians, male quacks. And I think, Alana, we need to talk about the fact women were hugely involved in healthcare.

[C]

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

[B]

Maybe.

[D]

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

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

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 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.

[C]

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.

[D]

But you're saying it's the noblewomen. They've got money and they're bored witless

[B]

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

[D]

Presumably.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. That's amazing.

[C]

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.

[D]

Yep.

[B]

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

[D]

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.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

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

[D]

A lot of the medicines appear across, like numerous texts. Sure.

[B]

Okay, Rhea, important question. What was cock water?

[C]

Okay. Cause this is a family friendly radio show. I'm gonna assume you're spelling caulk. C A, U, L, K. Oh, beautiful.

[D]

And it's.

[C]

It's mineral water or something chalky or.

[B]

No, it's spelled C O C K. Is it? Okay, it's spelled cock water.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Is 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.

[B]

And ambergris is whale phlegm, right?

[D]

It is, yeah.

[B]

Hyper expensive. Incredibly expensive.

[C]

Hard to find.

[B]

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

[C]

Sometimes just the ambergris will wash up on the beach.

[B]

Oh, beautiful.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And it's for fevers and things.

[B]

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

[D]

It sounds like a cure.

[C]

Chicken soup. It's creamer chicken soup.

[B]

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

[C]

Oil of frog.

[B]

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

[D]

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

[B]

Oh, come on. Come on. All right. Well, as a BBC program, I once again must 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. 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?

[D]

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 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.

[B]

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

[D]

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 seller, 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

[B]

wrong way or breech birth thing. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I. 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.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Which of these was not believed at the time? So, number 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.

[C]

I'm gonna go with number three. Umbilical cord and penis length. Cause 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 if you know nothing about the inside. And what was the last one again?

[B]

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

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And that one, I'm gonna say.

[D]

I think.

[C]

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.

[B]

I mean, you are correct to go for three as one. That might seem outlandish. They're all true. I lied to you, obviously. You know, you trusted me and I betrayed you. But, you know, comedy show, so what are you gonna do?

[C]

You're a man.

[B]

So 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? Talking about the 16th century, 17th century, yeah.

[D]

The physicians and the surgeons, they really wanted to regulate them and they kept trying to do it, but basically they never succeeded.

[B]

Rhea, we've been on quite a journey.

[C]

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 and walking around after childbirth.

[D]

There's no need to regulate this.

[B]

It's quite the story though, isn't it? The history of medicine in this period. Rhea, it's incredible. 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.

[C]

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

[B]

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

[D]

Okay, so there's this big emphasis on the market. And this is what I usually talk about, is that commercialisation 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 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 centres 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 Guise, 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.

[B]

That's amazing. Thank you so much. Wow.

[C]

I forgot that about the monks. The monks were the welfare system. You know, if you were tired or, 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, we lost our. Basically our mental health support network.

[D]

Completely dismantled the health system.

[B]

Yes. Just so he could marry a 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. Thank you so much, Rhea. And Listener, if you want more from Rhea, check out our episodes on Chunghi Sao, the amazing Pirate Queen, the most successful pirate of all time. And of course, 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 your 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 huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we have the amazing Dr. Alana Skus from the University of Reading. Thank you, Alana. Thank you. Pleasure to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, we have the brilliant Ria Lina, Dr. Rialina. Thank you, Ria.

[C]

Pleasure as always. See me afterwards for that round.

[B]

Thank you. 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 by. Foreign. Hi, I'm Phil Wang and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast 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, sketches, 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. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify brings built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting sky high sales stacking champion at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial [e-mail] win.

[E]

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Another pina colada?

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Yes, please.

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