The Surgeon, The Midwife and The Quack

Alana Skuse's book examines everyday medical practice in 16th- and 17th-century England, focusing on the range of practitioners from licensed physicians to informal domestic healers.

It situates medical practice within social, economic and cultural changes of the period, explaining how commercialization, professional bodies and print culture transformed healthcare.

The book combines narrative history with case studies and draws on contemporary medical texts, patient records and popular remedies to reveal how people sought care and how medicine evolved.

It highlights both cutting-edge discoveries of the era and persistent traditional beliefs and treatments, emphasizing the lived experience of illness and recovery.

Accessible and well-researched, the work aims to show how early modern English medicine shaped modern healthcare institutions.