Shakespeare and the Practice of Physic: Medical Narratives on the Early Modern English StageBy Shakespeare's time, the debate over legitimate medical practice had become vociferous and public. The powerful College of Physicians fought hard to discredit some and rein in others, but many resisted, denied, or ignored its authority. Dramatists did not fail to notice the turmoil, nor did they fail to comment on it - and no one commented more profoundly on stage than William Shakespeare. Going beyond the usual questions posed about Shakespeare and medicine, this study, which won the first Jay L. Halio Prize in Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies, explores Shakespeare's response to the early modern struggle for control of English medical practice. It does not rehearse the fundamentals of early modern medical thought such as the humoral system that have been more than adequately covered numerous times elsewhere. Instead, it undertakes a reading of popular English medical tracts in an effort to reconstruct the terms in which medical practitioners of all kinds were understood. injury were busy hearing such stories, and in a time of spectacular outbreaks of infectious disease, in a time of religious transition, and in a time of shifting modes of political power, such stories held especial fascination. Todd Pettigrew is an Associate Professor Cape Breton University. |
Contents
9 | |
Cymbelines Question An Introduction | 13 |
Art that God Allows Empirics | 34 |
By Reason of His Place Physicians | 61 |
Unaccustomed Drams and Unconstant Propositions Apothecaries and Beneficed Practitioners | 92 |
Not So Base Surgeons | 123 |
Virtue and Cunning Magical Healers | 139 |
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A. H. Bullen Aesculapius All's anxiety apothecary argue audience Banister body Bucknill Bullein Cerimon characters cians claim Clowes Cotta critics culture cure Cymbeline Cymbeline's death discourse disease Doctor dramatic dreams Early Modern England Early Modern English early modern medical Edited Elizabethan empirics English example fear female Furdell Galen Gentlewoman heal healers Helena Hoeniger Ibid ideological implies John John Cotta King Lady Macbeth Laurence's Lear learned physicians London Lopez madness magical medi medical knowledge medical practice medical practitioners Medicine and Shakespeare melancholy metaphor murder Narbon notes Oxford Paracelsian Paracelsus patient Pelling physi physic physician poison political prac profession purgatives question references Renaissance rhetorical Romeo and Juliet says scene Securis seems sense Shake Shakespeare and Medicine Shakespeare's medical Shakespeare's plays Short Discoverie sick Simon Forman social speare's story suggests surgeon surgery syphilis texts Thaisa Thomas Thomas Dekker Thomas Nashe tion titioners treatment William woman women wounds writing York