Anne Stobart. Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England

The seventeenth century continues to fascinate English historians. For many years, the intensity of our gaze was on the Civil Wars, not only on the events themselves, but on their political ramifications, their role in state formation, the Three Kingdoms, religious turmoil, and even the century’s internal historiographical debates. More recently, the historian’s attention has been directed toward its peoples—the criminals, the poor, witches, women—and with that has emerged a growing exploration of people’s self-agency. Anne Stobart joins the study of self-agency in health care and the pursuit of good health, as well as the related exploration of medical and scientific experimentation, explication, and the transfer of knowledge. Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England is a clearly written, well-organized look at “how health and disease were managed on a day-to-day basis,” including the complex and evolving interactions between household medicine and the expanding world of commercial medicine (1). There are four themes that span the text: a fuller understanding of self-help; women’s engagement in health care; changing ideas about disease and health; and household medicine’s relationship to consumer medicine. Ultimately, Stobart demonstrates that self-help did not necessarily mean self-sufficiency; yet, by exercising individual choice over how to engage in the medical market place, a culture of self-help and agency was established that would flourish well into the next century

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