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This is the first complete edition and English translation of John Hall's
Little Book of Cures, a fascinating medical casebook composed in Latin around 1634-5. John Hall (1575-1635) was Shakespeare's son-in-law (Hall married Susanna Shakespeare in 1607), and based his medical practice in Stratford-upon-Avon. Readers have never before had access to a complete English translation of John Hall's casebook, which contains fascinating details about his treatment of patients in and around Stratford.
Until Wells's edition, our knowledge of Hall and his practice has had to rely only on a partial, seventeenth-century edition (produced by James Cooke in 1657 and 1679, and re-printed with annotation by Joan Lane as recently as 1996). Cooke's edition significantly misrepresents Hall by abridging his manuscript (Cooke removed Hall's conversations with his patients), by errors of translation, and by combining Hall's work with examples from Cooke's own medical practice. Wells's work is the first complete, accurate, and authoritative edition of Hall's casebook. It especially reveals Hall's compassion for his patients, his feelings of joy when they made a recovery, and his religious faith in relation to his medical skills.
This comprehensive volume includes an introduction to Hall himself as well as the text, a consideration of his library, and an overview of the manuscript and how it survived.
List of contents
Foreword by Professor Sir Stanley Wells C.B.E.
1. Introducing John Hall, Master of Physicke
2. Recreating John Hall's library
3. John Hall's manuscript
4. Textual introduction
5. John Hall's
Little Book of CuresAppendix 1 John Hall's working library (a list of his regular, medical sources)
Appendix 2 Glossary of medical and pharmaceutical terms
Index
About the author
Greg Wells practised as a consultant in public health within the N.H.S. He received his MA and PhD from The University of Warwick
Paul Edmondson is Head of Research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Summary
Written by Shakespeare's son-in-law John Hall, The Little Book of Cures is a fascinating look into the life of a doctor in seventeenth-century Stratford-upon-Avon. -- .
