How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

In 16th and 17th century England, the plague and pox, disease and injury were a daily presence. At at time when medicine was a complex interplay of tradition, faith and observation, survival depended not only on doctors and their remedies but also on resilience and community support. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Alanna Skuse to explore how ordinary people navigated the perils of sickness and the diverse healers who sought to preserve life in an age where outcomes were always uncertain.

More:

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Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Windle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
0:02.6	If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:10.5	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries,
0:16.0	including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week.
0:25.2	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise.
0:46.8	Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
1:02.4	In an age of dazzling art, revolutionary science and spiritual upheaval, there was one
1:09.4	constant threat to life in Renaissance England. Illness.
1:14.6	From plague and pox to childbirth complications, cancer, melancholy, and wounds from war,
1:22.2	disease and injury stalked the 16th and 17th centuries with a merciless persistence. When the body broke down,
1:30.0	the question was not if you could be cured, but who might save you? Physicians were highly
1:35.2	trained and expensive, their advice often couched in the obscure language of humours and spirits.
1:41.6	Apothecaries sold powders and potions, some healing, some deadly.
1:47.5	Surgeons offered terrifying, painful procedures without aniseia. Midwives and household healers,
1:53.9	usually women, attended births and everyday sickness with herbal remedies and recipes passed
1:59.5	down through generations. And beyond them were the so-called
2:02.9	quacks, tooth drawers, bone setters, and travelling charlatans who dazzled crowds with miraculous
2:09.3	promises. Medicine in this period was as much about imagination and faith as it was about
2:15.5	science. Before microscopes, aniseasia or antibiotics,
2:20.3	practitioners relied on observation, experiment and inherited wisdom stretching back to Hippocrates
2:27.1	and Galen. They believed that health lay in the balance of the four humors, blood, phlegm yellow bile or collar, and blackbile or melanchola,
	...

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