This brief book was written in 1986. Seven years later, I am delighted that there is a demand for a second edition. I am even more pleased that, in the meantime, a large quantity of highquality research and synthetic writing has appeared on the history of British health and medicine between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. To accommodate this new work, in this second edition I have considerably revised the text, both in regard to details and in its wider views. I have also updated and extended the bibliography. I trust this book now represents a synthesis of our present understanding of the age.

A note on references

References in the text within square brackets relate to the numbered items in the Select Bibliography.

A note on language

To avoid clumsiness, I have, in the traditional manner, used the male pronouns (he, his) in the generic sense. When referring to regular doctors, my use of the pronoun ‘he’ is always literally accurate, since in the period covered by this book, only males could become practitioners. In Britain, women were debarred from the medical profession till the 1870s.