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.

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Authors and Affiliations

Folger Shakespeare Library, USA

Alanna Skuse

About the author

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.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England
Book Subtitle: Ravenous Natures
Authors: Alanna Skuse
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137487537
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-48752-0Published: 28 October 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-137-56919-6Published: 28 October 2015
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-48753-7Published: 11 November 2015
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 219
Topics: Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, British and Irish Literature, History of Science, Modern History, European Literature, European History

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

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