Alanna Skuse – författare

Want to know why Victorian doctors never washed their clothes? Who to call for a bad case of medieval bewitchment? Or how to cure the plague by staring at a toad?Blood, Guts, and Nasty Cuts is a whistle-stop tour of the grisly, glorious, and ingeniously inventive history of medicine, all the way from the ancient world right up to the twenty-first century. Immerse yourself in blood, boils, and bandages as you uncover how to treat tumours, battle bacterial infections and rustle up home remedies. Plus, along the way, meet swashbuckling surgeons, mad physicians, cunning lady herbalists, and – most importantly – some very brave patients!Dipping into history’s major medical events (move over COVID 19, the Black Plague is here), this book covers ancient operations, medieval maladies, and wartime cures. You’ll uncover the medicine made by mistake, the out-there experimenters who used themselves as test subjects, and how some crazy cures have actually been shown to really work today. It's a journey not for the faint-hearted!

Want to know why Victorian doctors never washed their clothes? Who to call for a bad case of medieval bewitchment? Or how to cure the plague by staring at a toad?Blood, Guts, and Nasty Cuts is a whistle-stop tour of the grisly, glorious, and ingeniously inventive history of medicine, all the way from the ancient world right up to the twenty-first century. Immerse yourself in blood, boils, and bandages as you uncover how to treat tumours, battle bacterial infections and rustle up home remedies. Plus, along the way, meet swashbuckling surgeons, mad physicians, cunning lady herbalists, and – most importantly – some very brave patients!Dipping into history’s major medical events (move over COVID 19, the Black Plague is here), this book covers ancient operations, medieval maladies, and wartime cures. You’ll uncover the medicine made by mistake, the out-there experimenters who used themselves as test subjects, and how some crazy cures have actually been shown to really work today. It's a journey not for the faint-hearted!

Offering an innovative perspective on early modern debates concerning embodiment, Alanna Skuse examines diverse kinds of surgical alteration, from mastectomy to castration, and amputation to facial reconstruction. Body-altering surgeries had profound socio-economic and philosophical consequences. They reached beyond the physical self, and prompted early modern authors to develop searching questions about the nature of body integrity and its relationship to the soul: was the body a part of one's identity, or a mere 'prison' for the mind? How was the body connected to personal morality? What happened to the altered body after death? Drawing on a wide variety of texts including medical treatises, plays, poems, newspaper reports and travel writings, this volume will argue the answers to these questions were flexible, divergent and often surprising, and helped to shape early modern thoughts on philosophy, literature, and the natural sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Offering an innovative perspective on early modern debates concerning embodiment, Alanna Skuse examines diverse kinds of surgical alteration, from mastectomy to castration, and amputation to facial reconstruction. Body-altering surgeries had profound socio-economic and philosophical consequences. They reached beyond the physical self, and prompted early modern authors to develop searching questions about the nature of body integrity and its relationship to the soul: was the body a part of one's identity, or a mere 'prison' for the mind? How was the body connected to personal morality? What happened to the altered body after death? Drawing on a wide variety of texts including medical treatises, plays, poems, newspaper reports and travel writings, this volume will argue the answers to these questions were flexible, divergent and often surprising, and helped to shape early modern thoughts on philosophy, literature, and the natural sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Offering an innovative perspective on early modern debates concerning embodiment, Alanna Skuse examines diverse kinds of surgical alteration, from mastectomy to castration, and amputation to facial reconstruction. Body-altering surgeries had profound socio-economic and philosophical consequences. They reached beyond the physical self, and prompted early modern authors to develop searching questions about the nature of body integrity and its relationship to the soul: was the body a part of one''s identity, or a mere ''prison'' for the mind? How was the body connected to personal morality? What happened to the altered body after death? Drawing on a wide variety of texts including medical treatises, plays, poems, newspaper reports and travel writings, this volume will argue the answers to these questions were flexible, divergent and often surprising, and helped to shape early modern thoughts on philosophy, literature, and the natural sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book is open access under a CC-BY licence. Cancer is perhaps the modern world's most feared disease. Yet, we know relatively little about this malady's history before the nineteenth century. This book provides the first in-depth examination of perceptions of cancerous disease in early modern England. Looking to drama, poetry and polemic as well as medical texts and personal accounts, it contends that early modern people possessed an understanding of cancer which remains recognizable to us today. Many of the ways in which medical practitioners and lay people imagined cancer – as a 'woman's disease' or a 'beast' inside the body – remain strikingly familiar, and they helped to make this disease a byword for treachery and cruelty in discussions of religion, culture and politics. Equally, cancer treatments were among the era's most radical medical and surgical procedures. From buttered frog ointments to agonizing and dangerous surgeries, they raised abiding questions about the nature of disease and the proper role of the medical practitioner.

This book is open access under a CC-BY licence. Cancer is perhaps the modern world's most feared disease. Yet, we know relatively little about this malady's history before the nineteenth century. This book provides the first in-depth examination of perceptions of cancerous disease in early modern England. Looking to drama, poetry and polemic as well as medical texts and personal accounts, it contends that early modern people possessed an understanding of cancer which remains recognizable to us today. Many of the ways in which medical practitioners and lay people imagined cancer – as a 'woman's disease' or a 'beast' inside the body – remain strikingly familiar, and they helped to make this disease a byword for treachery and cruelty in discussions of religion, culture and politics. Equally, cancer treatments were among the era's most radical medical and surgical procedures. From buttered frog ointments to agonizing and dangerous surgeries, they raised abiding questions about the nature of disease and the proper role of the medical practitioner.

Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine... and how not to die in the Renaissance'An entertaining history of medicine… Skuse brings a deep familiarity with the contemporary sources and a dry wit.' Dan Jones, The Sunday Times'A richly researched and atmospheric history.' Wall Street JournalThe cliched view medicine in the Renaissance world is dreadful: gore-splattered hacksaws, arsenic concoctions, the four humours and all those leeches…Reality, however, proves somewhat different.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a medical revolution was afoot. Physicians’ education was being formalised. Surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body with ever-greater skill. And, as European powers expanded into the New World, novel medicines and treatments were being discovered.Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England – a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics craftsmen, faith healers and snake oil merchants.Discover domestic healers like Elizabeth Freke, a doyenne of folk remedies, always ready to dole out tonics and elixirs to her ailing neighbours.Browse the shelves of the early modern apothecary with Nicholas Culpeper as he lays the groundwork for the modern pharmacy.Meet the expert midwife Jane Sharp, successful author and pioneer of women's health.Join the intrepid plague doctor George Thomson as he braves London's Great Plague. Humane and entrancing, The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack reveals the people and stories behind a scientific revolution.'Fascinating.' Daily Mail'Meticulously researched and deliciously detailed.' Victoria Shepherd, author of A History of Delusions

Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine. When we imagine Renaissance medicine, the cliché is dreadful – unsterile instruments, a total lack of anaesthetics and shocking levels of infant and maternal mortality. And that’s before you get into astrology, bloodletting and a litany of bizarre ‘treatments’, more likely to kill than cure… As ever, the true picture is somewhat different. Here, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern medicine began to take shape. Medical education was being formalised for the first time. Through dissections and hands-on experience in war, surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body and distributing their work across the continent. And, as European powers expanded their reach into the New World, new medicines and treatments were being discovered and cultivated. Historian Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England – a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics’ craftsmen, faith healers and, of course, snake oil salesmen. There’s the domestic healer, her kitchen stocked with all manner of herbs, tonics and elixirs, ready to dole out to ailing neighbours; the expert midwife, called upon when the physician and surgeon failed; the trusted apothecary, shop stocked with remedies for every ailment and ingredients from each corner of the globe. Humane and entrancing, The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack reveals the miraculous birth of modern medicine.

Discover the remarkable birth of modern medicine... and how not to die in the Renaissance'An entertaining history of medicine… Skuse brings a deep familiarity with the contemporary sources and a dry wit.' Dan Jones, The Sunday Times'A richly researched and atmospheric history.' Wall Street JournalThe cliched view medicine in the Renaissance world is dreadful: gore-splattered hacksaws, arsenic concoctions, the four humours and all those leeches…Reality, however, proves somewhat different.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a medical revolution was afoot. Physicians’ education was being formalised. Surgeons were documenting the intricacies of the human body with ever-greater skill. And, as European powers expanded into the New World, novel medicines and treatments were being discovered.Alanna Skuse ventures into the bustling medical marketplace of Renaissance England – a world of travelling surgeons, prosthetics craftsmen, faith healers and snake oil merchants.Discover domestic healers like Elizabeth Freke, a doyenne of folk remedies, always ready to dole out tonics and elixirs to her ailing neighbours.Browse the shelves of the early modern apothecary with Nicholas Culpeper as he lays the groundwork for the modern pharmacy.Meet the expert midwife Jane Sharp, successful author and pioneer of women's health.Join the intrepid plague doctor George Thomson as he braves London's Great Plague. Humane and entrancing, The Surgeon, The Midwife, The Quack reveals the people and stories behind a scientific revolution.'Fascinating.' Daily Mail'Meticulously researched and deliciously detailed.' Victoria Shepherd, author of A History of Delusions

This open access book offers the first full study of the phenomenon of self-wounding as it is represented in early modern literature. It looks at depictions of self-injury in ballads, plays, medical texts and histories from the 1580s to the turn of the eighteenth century. In this period, it argues, self-injury was not necessarily viewed as indicative of psychological distress, as it is in modern discourses of ‘self-harm’. Rather, self-wounding might work as a form of protest, a persuasive tactic, a means of self-regulation or an assertion of agency over one’s own body. This book blends traditional literary studies methodologies with insights from sociology, emotion studies, cognitive psychology and practice-led research to shed new light on early modern ideas about rhetoric, authenticity, emotion, and the relationship between body and identity. The book also confronts the difficulties of examining such ‘topical’ phenomena. Can the anachronism of comparisons between modern and historical self-injury be made productive, rather than reductive? What does it mean to talk about ‘self-injury’ in a period which did not have a distinct word for these practices? In so doing, it suggests new directions for literary-historical studies of the body and its practices, arguing that in such cases, we should seek not to familiarise the past but to defamiliarize the present.