INTRODUCTION

This chapter gives the background and context to the rest of the book. It sets out some of the basic findings of historical demographers on mortality and morbidity in early modern England (c. 1550–c.1700). It then sketches in the wide range of medical provision patients could use as described by recent work in the social history of medicine, and discusses how medicine co-existed with the other healing main resource, religion. Finally, the texts that communicated medical knowledge and practice are considered. Most were written in English and this helped to create a literate medical culture that both recognised popular–elite distinctions and accepted that educated lay people and practitioners could share in a common medical culture.

LIFE AND DEATH

Our Clocks of Health seldome go true: those of Death more certaine than beleeved.

Medical writers and practitioners in the early modern period lived in a world where disease and death were ever present, or so it seemed. Death was highlighted in the Christian teaching that emphasised the need to be constantly prepared for death. Illness was ‘the messenger of death’, and the devout declared that ‘every day shall be as my dying day’. However, not all age groups were equally at risk of dying.

Death especially dogged the footsteps of the young. Early modern England had higher infant mortality rates than many Third World countries today, although those in continental Europe and Scotland were worse.