I had posed a question to the subreddit awhile back which was left unanswered, but seems to something that relates to your work so I would repost it here. I know AMAs are not suited to quite the depth of a standalone thread, so I hope the question isn't too involved, but any thoughts would be appreciated!

What were the dominant characteristics of "Grief" in the Early Modern Anglo-American traditions, especially as regards the death of children?

The death of children was, of course, much more common in earlier periods than it is today. It is obviously something now that we consider to be truly one of the greatest tragedies that a person can suffer, having to bury their child, but essentially I'm wondering whether we attach more gravity, or otherwise approach such events differently, because we have, fortunately, made it such a comparative rarity. Recently reading mention of a New England man who not only had to bury his wife far before old age, but eventually five of their children due to various illnesses, it made me wonder in what ways he might cope, rationalize, and move on from that.

It can be hard to keep a child occupied when they’re stuck indoors in bed. What sort of activities were considered good for a child in recovery from an illness?

What was the most baffling practise of medicine practised back in those days that would make doctor's today wonder "what on earth were they thinking"?

What did women typically use for their menstrual cycle back then?

What social mechanisms were in place in early modern England to help people recovering from serious illnesses ease back into their routines of their daily life, work, etc?

How did people test various types of plants to see if they had medicinal power? And further, how did they first think of drying some, using others fresh, steeping others into a tea? Seems like a lot of trial and error, with potentially fatal consequences.

Thank you so much for your AMA, Dr. Newton! Your books are really terrific reading, both as academic work and as a glimpse into the day to day experiences of illness, recovery, and death in the EM era. They do an especially great job of teasing out the sometimes marginal/marginalized interior lives of children from texts written largely by adults. Have there been any unexpectedly revealing or surprising source materials that you’ve encountered in your research, as far as uncovering patients’ own thoughts about their illnesses?

I'm not sure if this is a little outside your dates of specialty, but can you speak to what the Sweating Sickness actually was? Do you think that illness still exists today under a different name? I have been interested in it since learning that Anne Boleyn almost died of the Sweat, which had a small impact on English history.

Do you know what it was like for parents to look after young children (1-3yrs old) back then? What would the children have ate, as children nowadays eat blended foods.

How long did it take for humoral theory to be abandoned as a legitimate medical practice, and what was the transition like towards more modern practices?

What sort of training did early doctors receive? Would a doctor have received formal education using pooled knowledge, or did they have their own signature treatments they would swear by?

Hello! Thank You for being here replying. May You please talk a bit about the use of herbs as medicines? Thank You!

Did physicians source their own medicines/herbs, or did they use a pharmacy/apothecary?

How widespread was syphilis, and what happened to the children born with congenital syphilis from their mothers? Pretty horrific birth defects, but what was done with these poor kids?

Do you happen to know anything about prevalence of anorexia during that period? Or even better, if you have any recommendations of where I could find such information (e.g. the history of anorexia)?

How did hey treat spontaneous pneumothorax in those days? Were sp patients simply left to die?

How often did people bathe? We're led to believe it was a rare thing for people to do so, but I would think the stench of unwashed bodies, not to mention just dirt and grime, would require a washing fairly often.

Hello Dr.Hannah, Taking into account child mortality, what was the life expectancy for someone who lives past age 6-8 or so in early modern England?

Was there a high occurrence of alcoholism or other addiction back then? And if so, were the suffers given any kind of treatment, or just outcast?

How prevalent was cancer throughout history? It seems as though history books and documentaries leave this out. Has it been left out due to the fact that the plague, measles, and others were far more common

Are there any treatment methods, either physical or mental that you think had merit? That might actually benefit modern patients?

What was the most common cause of death for kids? Which disease? & Average age of of kids when they died from childhood illness?

Oh, I have a question (two actually, sorry for being greedy), I really hope I'm not too late.

Okay, so first: "First aid" look like during the English Civil War? Were there, for lack of a better word, medics by that time and if so what would be the checklist for assessing and treating wounds?

Second (let's keep this in the 1640s but it could apply to anything in your range): At what age would a child be expected to be active in the military? Would it be influenced by income level? Were there villages that were relatively invisible to the Crown and, when the civil war broke out, at what age would a child stop seeing themselves as a child and be more wont to pick a side in the conflict based off their own values/interests?

What is the craziest treatment that actually worked, albeit for a different reason than the physician thought?

Hi Dr. Hannah, it's great having you here!

I was wondering whether during your studies you've come across any sources that specifically relate to child mortality in England vs child mortality in Southern Europe, especially Portugal/Spain, during the early modern period.

The gist of my question comes down to a sort of talk I've heard quite a few times, as someone who has lived and was raised in Portugal, where it's basically said that, back then, children's mortality rates were significantly lower in Portugal/Spain than in Britain/Northern Europe, and that, coincidentally or not, birth rates in Iberia were lower back then vis-a-vis Britain.

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Diet, weather/exposure to extreme temperatures, diseases and access to certain medicinal herbs, as well as access to the medicinal legacy of Muslim Iberia, allegedly had an influence in this difference.

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Is this substantiated, at all? Thanks!

How common was it for people to consult “white witches” rather than town docs?

Im curious if that during the time frame you specialize in there were doctors who treated those with mental health diagnosis and those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I know that formal categorization and diagnosos is a more recent affair and many of the mental health dx may have been overlooked. However with ID/DD in particular it is fairly evident a disorder such as down syndrome, angelmans, prater willoe etc is present. Were these types of individuals treated by regular physicians or did they recieve some kind of "specialist" care? Inuse the term specialist loosely as even in recent years ive seen african tribal children with autism treated with blood lettings from local with doctors.

I’ve researching the origins of our zombie and vampire legends; I want to figure out if undeath was primarily seen as a spiritual condition or if there was understood to be a medical component as well.

Have you come across any illnesses that were seen as specifically leading to undeath?

Thanks.

Hi Dr Hannah!

Is there a particular practice from the era you specialise in that is most likely ineffective or wrong, however still continues to this day due to the certainty or affiliations people had with said treatments during the English Early-Modern Era? Whether superstitious, cultural or religious/non-religous?

(I'm thinking in the vein of perhaps hard alcohols to treat a chest cold or something of that ilk if the puts you down the right path).

What bearing did the black death have on the children and parents of early modern England? Was it discussed? was it feared? I know there are urban legends around the nursery rhyme "Ring a Ring o' Rosie" but what is your opinon? Thanks.

Hey! I did Linguistics and I was wondering how the language of medicine changes during this period? Anything grand, such as differing ways of referring to the same sicknesses? Did the vocabulary and practices from the Norman French occupation begin to enrich their knowledge earlier or later?

Language and medicine are very interesting and given England's unique linguistic status in this time period, I thought it needed to be asked.

Were there any questions you tried to answer but couldn't due to the limitations on your sources? Have you managed to find a satisfying amount of diary entries regarding the sickness of children or did you have to often look elsewhere to fill in the gaps? I've found that, specifically prior to the 18th century, this type of sources can be incredibely rich but also fairly hard to come by and spread out. Have you experienced anything like this?

What were the standard practices for women and girls that were menstruating during early modern England? I read about Queen Elizabeth I using medicinal marijuana for her cramps, but am not sure on the accuracy.

What was used for depression if it existed back then

What were the treatments for headache besides trepanation during the period you know about?

What were cultural attitudes towards headache sufferers during this period?

Asking because I deal with a rare constant head pain and I'm wanting to read/research the history of this condition for essays I'm writing to help deal with it and maybe establish something that might help another headache sufferer.

Can you list any specific medications that definitely effective?

Three questions:

1. When a child got sick, did communities shun the family for a time? Concerned of their own children getting ill?

2. How where children with physical or mental ailments handled/treated/prepped for adulthood? Such as mental retardation, MS, servers mobility limitations, being deaf, so on. By no means do I intend to disparage anyone with the specific issues I mentioned. My cousin has autism and I know my family had to learn a ton and make adjustments to our normal routine to help him grow into the amazing individual he is today.

3. Are there any medical professionals or theories during this period that had it “correct” concerning some medical facts or procedures, but where not taken seriously at the time?

Thank you for doing this AMA! Very interesting!

What is your favourite tidbit/fact in your respective field?

Did England partake in the use of "corpse medicine" as much as other parts of Europe? I.E. distilled blood, mummia, bone powders/ creams, dried organs to cure epilepsy, etc.

how did they treat ill people with contagious illnesses back then? not only doctors but also family members.

What were the primary sources of medical philosophy? I always assumed in this era it stemmed mostly from the Greeks, but I saw you mention below that herbs were endorsed by the Bible. Did the Bible also contribute to the medical thought of the day?

I always wonder if the parents would have panicked at the beginning symptoms of the common cold. Did they go straight to bed? Was the house very worried? Or were cold symptoms quickly recognized as not something more serious?

How on Earth did battle surgeons prepare for the unspeakable horrors of their job in this period? Is their any record of the impact battle surgery had on the surgeons?

When was any sort of hygiene practiced? When was the first record of a doctor suggesting that children wash with soap to avoid illness?

Have you come across evidence of patients of this era questioning the competence of their doctors? It seems that a doctor of this era would do more harm than good most of the time and recovery was a matter of chance.

Was epilepsy more common in the past? Or is it simply better managed today? Or are people today incorrectly interpreting “fits” as epilepsy when it was in fact a number of different issues?

It seems like it is mentioned much more frequently in biographies of historical figures and contemporary accounts from the past.

Hi Doc.! Do you have any sense of what the average patient thought about surgery in those days?

The American historian Samuel Eliot Morison, drawing on discussions he had with older people from Indiana, painted a picture of daily life there in the 1840s where the early autumn was "sick season" - presumably that's when malaria acted up.

Did early modern England have commonly accepted "sick seasons"? I've heard The Fens long had malaria but were there other diseases that seemed to strike communities at regular, annual intervals?

How are people with depression viewed/treated?

Is there any early medicine that we still use today in are modern medicine?

Was sweating sickness still in existence during your period of study? I study UK history 1400-1600 and it’s mind boggling to me that someone could go from zero to dead in 24 hours. Or is that even true?

Thank you for this AMA!

Two questions.

1. If you had to pick the one most important medical breakthrough from your period, what would it be?

2. Can you talk more about your work in schools? I am interested in what you mean by using senses to learn about the history of medicine.

When did blood-letting finally drop off, and was it accredited to finding it did not work or finding a better method?

I’ve always wondered about confinement. Did it start at labor, at some point was the woman confined? And how confined? Just out of the public eye, or to bed all day?

Did they really use spices in medicines during 1600s?

This is fascinating to me as I am writing a work of fiction that deals a lot with medicine in its less modern stages. Your answers are enlightening and inspirational. Fascinating to hear the approaches, ancestral medicines, the idea of humours, and the way that overlaps with, say, Tibetan medicine.

A constant throughout history has been epidemics, from medieval plagues to the Spanish flu. However since the later, the only truly horrific disease we couldn't overcome for some time was AIDS, and the impact of that was somewhat contained and over a longer period of time. We have rightly been concerned about various strains of ebola, although not being airborne it's horrific but containable. Then we have the various avian and swine flu outbreaks, which I think were not treated with the appropriate level of seriousness because people consider flu as a few days in bed and a lemsip, and underestimate the catastrophic potential of a long overdue flu pandemic.

So to get to the point - are we complacent considering a massively fatal flu epidemic is overdue, will move quicker than even the terrible timing of the 1918/19 flu, and is this a cyclical thing that, despite our medical advances, these things are still going to come around again? And will it divide the western and less developed nations in it's impact.

Hi, sorry for my question that doesn't concern England, I am an amateur writer and my story tales place at the end of the 15th century in Italy. I'd love to know more about syphilis at that period of time (how did it affect people, how the public reacted to it and the cures given by professionals) and specifically about Cesare Borgia's case. Thank you very much in advance :)

Would you say that Ian Hacking's position - as I understand it, that a particular 'social space' and set of circumstances had to exist for particular mental illnesses to make sense as aberrant behaviour - could also be extrapolated to refer to psychiatric philiosophy and treatment?

That is to say, is it the case that it's not simply a case of having the idea, that there are wider social conditions that must pre-empt the idea?

How much alcohol did a usual diet contain back then, and how did that relate to health and nutrition.

Sub questions:
-did it change seasonally ?
-what types of ways was alcohol used as medicine?
-to what extent did people also realize alcohol was poison?

With all the wars and disruption going on in that period from the Reformation, what was regular healthcare like for displaced people and civilians caught up in the chaos?

Fantastic AMA Thanks

I’m a kid in England in 1580. What disease am I most likely to catch, how would a doctor treat me, and what would be my chance of survival?

What ailments was bleeding typically prescribed for and did anyone question the practice of bleeding during this era?

How did the masses avoid scurvy? Did everyone have decent access to vitamin c?

Did people then have comfort foods when they were sick, like we have chicken noodle soup?

What is the most interesting and/or frightening usage of biological warfare you’ve heard of during the time period you specialize in?

How prevalent was biological warfare during this time period, and what were the most common methods of it?

Is there a good book about using modern medicine to explain historical mysteries?

I remember hearing a story about the original count dracula simply being a undiagnosed case of Acute Intermittent Porphyria and became very curious since then of other potential cases in history.

Hello! Do you have any sources on injuries and subsequent treatment of wounds sustained in a duel or swordfight?

This is wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

I have three questions.

1. What was the relationship between England and the rest of Europe regarding innovation and techniques in early medicine?
2. Other than humoral medicine, where did people turn to seek remedies and alleviation?
3. Similar to the second, but more specific. Were there interventions that would be considered either of the occult or medicines that were look down upon like witchcraft?

Do you have a bigger list of books or other resources on the topic that you recommend? Preferably ones that go into further detail than the usual books you'd find at a typical book store? Thanks!

How was soap used as medicine in the early times?

Hello! I am a pharmacy student who also has a deep love of history, and I'd like to know more about the origins of my profession. I am your typical American mutt when it comes to my ancestry, but I have contact with distant relatives in Germany. Are there any resources you would recommend if I wanted to learn more about European or English pharmacy/apothecaries in the 17th century?

Thanks for doing AMA. I have a couple of questions.

How was child birth in medieval England? Did the father attend or not? How did they take care the post-birthing for mom and dad?

In Chinese tradition there are celebration for 1 month, 100 days, and 1 year baby. Did medieval England have similar celebration? Did they celebrate birthdays of their children?

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Thank you

Were music therapy ever used for healing or calming down patients in hospitals and houses? Thanks for doing this AMA!

What if any part of your knowledge come from coronial or other legal documents? Any suggested sources?

What do you know about what we currently call type 1 diabetes in this era? What was it called, and how often did it strike children?

What do you know about Francisco Javier Balmis & Javier Salvany? Their expedition would fit perfectly in your field of study even if they weren't from England.

A decade ago, I was flipping through books in a book store and in a book about the history of medicine I saw a blurb that, as recently as the 17th century, people would treat bloody wounds by applying herbs to the sword that caused it and not the wound itself. This has stuck with me all these years; I wish I bought the book. Can you tell me more about this and other surprisingly backwards medical ideas that persisted until our recent past?

I'm also a medical historian, my current area of focus is on the American Civil War. Recently I've been doing research into the direct effects of the Union Blockades on children in the South thanks to malnutrition and lack of preventatives leading to a lot of outbreaks of recurring diseases. Are there any similar occurrences that you know of in your scope of study? I'd love to have some comparisons to work off of