From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.

This podcast is called,

I know my physics will work with him.

In addition to being home to the world's largest Shakespeare collection,

the Folger also houses a huge assortment of other rare books and manuscripts

about the world in which Shakespeare

lived and wrote, books on early modern politics, exploration and trade, and the subject of this

podcast, Medicine. Being a patient in Shakespeare's time was an adventure. You might be told

to drink liquid gold or syrup of violets. You might undergo a

violent purgation to take the bad humors out of your body. They might draw blood from your ankle or your

arm. With leeches. But while these prescriptions seem laughable today,

elements of the thinking they were based on have come all the way down to us in the 21st century.

That thinking, though it might seem unrelated to Shakespeare's stories, is surprisingly present in his writing.

Considering all of this, we brought in two guests to take a look at medicine in the era when

Shakespeare was writing.

One is my predecessor in this job, the Folger's Director Emerita Gail Kern Pastor.

Along with her extensive knowledge of Shakespeare's work, Gail has an abiding interest

in how the Elizabethans understood the physical world, along with metaphysics, and their

impact on the functions of the human body.

Along with Gail is Barbara Traister, Professor Emerita of English at Lehigh University.

Barbara is an authority on the life and work of Simon Foreman, whose case notes are the earliest

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