The editors have incurred many debts in preparing this book, and both etiquette and ethics would be contravened if they were not discharged here. Above all, we wish to thank the contributors for so cheerfully complying with our suggestions for preparing their papers for publication and efficiently meeting our schedules. It is thanks to their cooperation that this volume has appeared speedily and painlessly; their revisions have helped to give it internal coherence. This volume has emerged from papers delivered at a conference on the History of Medical Ethics, held at the Wellcome Institute...

Premodern society in England was overshadowed by illness and the threat of death. Disease descended suddenly, selecting individual victims or attacking entire households and the community at large. What did people do when they fell sick? The authors investigate the well-established tradition of self-diagnosis and medication, called 'family medicine' or 'kitchen physic'; the use of traditional healers, such as midwives, itinerants, and 'wise women'; and the flourishing world of quacks whose nostrums promised to restore one's youth or to cure cancer. Doctors and the medical profession were not...

Pre-modern society was overshadowed by illness and the threat of death. This outstanding new book examines what people did when they fell sick in Britain between 1650 - 1850. The authors investigate the well-established and flourishing tradition of self-medication, as practised by individuals, within the family and in the wider community. They look at what kinds of medical services could be obtained, both from the regular profession and among quacks and other healers. Above all they explore the personal and sociological bonds developed between patients and their doctors, examining in...