Civic and Medical Worlds in Early Modern England

This book investigates representations of regular and irregular medical practice in early modern England. Focusing on the prolific figures of the barber, surgeon and barber-surgeon, the author explores what it meant to the early modern population for a group of practitioners to be associated with both the trade guilds and an emerging professional medical world. The book uncovers the differences and cross-pollinationsbetween barbers and surgeons' practices which play out across the literature: it shows not only their cultural, civic, medical and occupational histories but also describes how we should interpret patterns in language, name choice, performance, materiality, acoustics and semiology in the period. The investigations prompt new readings of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Beaumont, among others.