Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England

This book is open access under a CC-BY licence.

Cancer is perhaps the modern world's most feared disease. Yet, we know relatively little about this malady's history before the nineteenth century. This book provides the first in-depth examination of perceptions of cancerous disease in early modern England. Looking to drama, poetry and polemic as well as medical texts and personal accounts, it contends that early modern people possessed an understanding of cancer which remains recognizable to us today. Many of the ways in which medical practitioners and lay people imagined cancer as a 'woman's disease' or a 'beast' inside the body remain strikingly familiar, and they helped to make this disease a byword for treachery and cruelty in discussions of religion, culture and politics. Equally, cancer treatments were among the era's most radical medical and surgical procedures. From buttered frog ointments to agonizing and dangerous surgeries, they raised abiding questions about the nature of disease and the proper role of the medical practitioner.

Autorentext
Alanna Skuse is a scholar of early modern literature and history, who has lectured at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, UK. She has previously published on early modern treatments for cancer and on the uses of 'canker' in Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Klappentext

This book is open access under a CC-BY licence.

Cancer is perhaps the modern world's most feared disease. Yet, we know relatively little about this malady's history before the nineteenth century. This book provides the first in-depth examination of perceptions of cancerous disease in early modern England. Looking to drama, poetry and polemic as well as medical texts and personal accounts, it contends that early modern people possessed an understanding of cancer which remains recognizable to us today. Many of the ways in which medical practitioners and lay people imagined cancer as a 'woman's disease' or a 'beast' inside the body remain strikingly familiar, and they helped to make this disease a byword for treachery and cruelty in discussions of religion, culture and politics. Equally, cancer treatments were among the era's most radical medical and surgical procedures. From buttered frog ointments to agonizing and dangerous surgeries, they raised abiding questions about the nature of disease and the proper role of the medical practitioner.

Inhalt
List Of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Referencing Conventions
Introduction

1. What Was Cancer? Definition, Diagnosis And Cause
2. Cancer And The Gendered Body
3. 'It Is, Say Some, Of A Ravenous Nature': Zoomorphic Images Of Cancer
4. Cancerous Growth And Malignancy
5. Wolves' Tongues And Mercury: Pharmaceutical Cures For Cancer
6. 'Cannot You Use A Loving Violence?': Cancer Surgery
   Conclusion
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index