Lucinda McCray Beier - Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-Century England

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Routledge Revivals

Sufferers and Healers

Lucinda McCray Beiers remarkable book, first published in 1987, enters the world of illness in seventeenth-century England, exploring what it was like to be either a sufferer or a healer. A wide spectrum of healers existed, ranging between the housewife, with her simple herbal preparations, local cunning-folk and bonestters, travelling healers, and formally accredited surgeons and physicians. Basing her study upon personal accounts written by sufferers and healers, Beier examines the range of healers and therapies available, describes the disorders people suffered from, and indicates the various ways sufferers dealt with their ailments. She includes several case-studies of healers and sufferers, and looks in detail at the ways in which womens identities and duties were associated with childbirth, illness and healing. This title will be of interest to students of history.

Sufferers and Healers

The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-Century England

Lucinda McCray Beier

First published in 1987

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1987 Lucina McCray Beier

The right of Lucinda McCray Beier to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 87020771

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-18263-9 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-64621-3 (ebk)

SUFFERERS & HEALERS

The experience of illness in Seventeenth-Century England

LUCINDA McCRAY BEIER

First published in 1987 by

Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by

Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.

in association with Methuen Inc.

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Set in Bembo

by Columns of Reading

and printed in Great Britain

by Richard Clay Ltd.,

Bungay, Suffolk

Lucinda McCray Beier 1987

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Beier, Lucinda McCray.

Sufferers and healers.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Physician and patient England History 17th century. 2. Medicine England History 17th century.

I. Title.

R727.3.B43 1987 610.941 8720771

ISBN 0710210531

British Library CIP Data also available

ISBN 0710210531

To Lee, with gratitude and love.

CONTENTS

N .B. In quotations from original sources, spelling and punctuation have been modernised and abbreviations and suspensions have been extended. Dates are given in new style, the year beginning on 1 January.

No book can be attributed to its author alone. This is especially true of first books, even truer of the books resulting from Ph.D. theses. If I were to thank all of those who influenced the conception, preparation and execution of this work, this brief note would be longer than the book itself. Thus, I must be economical.

First of all, thanks are due to my parents, Robert and Janet McCray, who encouraged my earliest interest in history and medicine. I also wish to thank my first history teachers, foremost among them Professor A. R. Hogue of Indiana University. Later inspiration, support and criticism came from the history faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana, especially from Professor Walter Arnstein and Dr Caroline Hibbard. My thesis would never have been finished without the help of my supervisor at the University of Lancaster, Dr Roger Smith. My external examiners, Dr Paul Slack and Dr Roy Porter, have rendered assistance above and beyond the call of duty. I am grateful to Dr David Hamilton for his careful reading of . I would also like to thank the Cambridge University Press for allowing me to reprint material on the Josselins experience contained in my essay In sickness and in health: a seventeenth-century familys experience (in Patients and Practitioners, ed. Roy Porter, Cambridge University Press, 1985).

I am especially grateful to the Interlibrary Loan department at the University of Lancaster and the staffs of the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and the British Library. I also wish to thank the Royal Society, without whose grant I would have been unable to complete my research. Andrew Wheatcroft, my editor at Routledge & Kegan Paul, has provided practical and moral support throughout the process of converting thesis to book, proving that the clichd enmity between publishing staff and writers need have no basis in fact.

Finally, I must thank my family. My sons, Robert Joseph, Jesse, Jacob and Zachary, were all born during the years spent researching and writing this book. They have tolerated the haphazard housekeeping resulting from mummys work without complaint and with much good humour. To my husband, Lee, I owe a debt which can never be repaid. His practical aid, imaginative criticism and expert advice have helped turn a vague fantasy into a reality. The faults in this book are my own; much of the good in it is his.

Along with death, taxes and the poor, illness, injury, childbirth and old age are always with us. These human universals are, and have always been, intrinsically interesting, permeating day-to-day conversation, providing comedy and tragedy in entertainment, and forming the subject matter of research in a multitude of disciplines.

Today we are obsessed by various aspects of health and illness. We exercise and diet according to infinitely mutable theories. Endlessly we debate the moral and ethical issues of abortion, contraception and euthanasia. We criticise, exploit and are addicted to our medical services, expecting far more than we can ever receive. We live in fear of diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS, enraged because they are beyond our control.

Our vulnerability, fear and anger are not new. These also are common aspects of the human condition, products, like other pieces of mental baggage, of the Western tradition which has never become reconciled to the existence of evil and mortality. Some things do not change. Suffering and death come to us all.

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