How to Survive in Renaissance England
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Quacks, wise women, barber surgeons and private madhouses - just some of the options available if you were to find yourself in ill health in the 16th and 17th centuries. Dan is joined by historian Dr Alanna Skuse to look at healthcare in Renaissance England, from healing the humours and blood letting to cross animal blood transfusions, skin grafts that involved attaching the face to the upper arm and the notorious treatments of patients at Bedlam, Britain's most famous psychiatric hospital. But not all treatments were bizarre or gruesome; in fact, early practitioners had some pretty progressive ideas around holistic health, the benefits of nature, sleep and friendship.
Alanna shares astonishing stories of treatments, patients and practitioners from her new book 'The Surgeon, the Midwife and the Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England'
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Now, if you were to take a train to History Hit HQ, |
| 0:08.2 | well, you have to go to near a station. We don't have an actual station inside the building yet. |
| 0:12.3 | You'd have to get off probably at Liverpool Street Station in the middle of East London. That's not far from |
| 0:16.1 | the River, Thames. Those of you know this part of the city know it's a bustling hub of city workers in skyscrapers, |
| 0:23.4 | plus us media types tapping away in cafes, talking nonsense, offices in repurposed old warehouses. |
| 0:29.6 | But what you might not know is that Liverpool Street Station sits on top of the site of the old |
| 0:34.5 | Bethlehem Royal Hospital, which later became known as Bedlam, famed for its |
| 0:40.1 | reputation as a mental asylum that kept patients all too often in appalling, torturous conditions |
| 0:48.3 | from the 14th century through to 19th when, thankfully, underwent all sorts of reforms. |
| 0:54.0 | It's one of the world's oldest |
| 0:55.1 | psychiatric institutions, and it did mark a turning point in medicine and England, a transition |
| 1:00.2 | from the world of holistic and folk, spiritual healing, of perhaps faith healers, we call them, |
| 1:05.1 | to more institutionalised healthcare. But frankly, the stories that came out of Bedlam |
| 1:10.3 | tell us that this wasn't necessarily a better route. |
| 1:13.7 | So, as a person with ailing health in the Renaissance era, if you were suffering from a kidney problem, say, or from plague, or you were caught in the throes of depression, what were your options to get help? |
| 1:26.4 | Would you go to a local wise woman, or the |
| 1:28.7 | apothecary with its jars and drawers of remedies? Or would you enter the doors of an institution |
| 1:34.7 | like Bedlam? Well, in this episode, I'm going to go through all your options with the help of Dr. |
| 1:39.1 | Alana Skews. She has studied the history of healthcare and Renaissance England and found |
| 1:43.6 | some pretty extraordinary stories about patients and healers |
| 1:46.1 | and the beginnings of the scientific revolution |
| 1:49.0 | that was going to take place in England throughout the 16th and into the 17th century, |
... |
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