Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine, and Care in Wales, 1600–1750 (review)

This stimulating book sets out to offer “a good regional medical history” of Wales in an important period of transition (p. x). It also suggests “what to ‘do’ with the history of medicine in Wales” (p. 3) by considering a wide range of sources, in both English and Welsh, from probate inventories and account books, to diaries and poems. The three sections deal with notions of disease in Welsh society from the later Middle Ages down to the later eighteenth century; medical knowledge, and the circulation of new ideas in both Welsh and English; and concepts of sickness and caring in a Welsh social setting. There is a robust discussion of writing the history of a country lacking state institutions of its own, and in which two languages competed for primacy of esteem. Withey sees Wales as “a country pulling simultaneously in two directions,” between the “rural traditions, medical legends and folklore, oral culture, and localism” (p. 202) of its past, on one hand, and on the other the advances of print culture (first in English, then in Welsh), the provision of medical supplies and services by apothecaries and doctors, and the caring provisions made by the poor law, local communities, and even small hospitals. The effect of these advances was that “[f]or a small, relatively sparsely populated and reputedly insular country, Wales was remarkably open for business” (p. ix).

Though the emphasis of the book is on the later part of the period, when change was so extensive that some topics (surgery and midwifery) have had to be excluded, important suggestions are also made about the sixteenth century. Discussing “The Welsh Body,” Withey undermines notions of a backward and remote culture by showing how medieval learning transmitted in Latin fused with folk concepts and representations of the body in Welsh poetry to provide a distinctive conception of bodily health. This then served as a receptive vehicle for the absorption of new ideas percolating into Wales from Europe through the English language. Medical guides, receipts, and other material flowed in and were copied, translated, and discussed in both Welsh and English. The emphasis is on the plurality of experiences, and their plasticity, but most important on “the strong Welsh-language oral culture of knowledge sharing” (pp. 6–7) as the matrix that, contrary to historians’ usual assumptions, made possible the reception and transformation of new ideas. Translations from English and Latin, and the circulation of manuscripts in Welsh, complemented the oral discussion. One consequence was the growth in English loan words of medical significance. But far from regarding this language change as cultural loss, Withey speculates that a process akin to today’s absorption of new ideas into “vernacular spoken Welsh” was actually reinvigorating and adapting the language (p. 78).

This earlier change makes later developments more understandable. A large sample of probate inventories from Glamorgan is used to reconstruct possession of domestic equipment and provisions, and compared to a smaller sample from Montgomeryshire in the middle of Wales. A total of 124 apothecaries are identified between 1600 and 1762, and a number of men described as “doctor,” whether licensed or not. Thirty inventories record a “surgeon” and five a “physitian,” as English occupational terms grew more common. In another context, Withey notes that men’s roles as carers and healers have tended to be neglected and that records of remedies in their commonplace books may indicate a desire to exert control over a traditionally “female” domain. Though none of the surviving receipts for medical services were written in Welsh, and Withey uses the expression Anglicisation himself, the thrust of his argument tends to suggest a more subtle, complex process at work in bringing Welsh and English experiences closer together.

For the latter half of the chosen period, the survival of more evidence tends to make the cultural convergence with developments in England more apparent. Withey builds on Richard...