The Royal Doctors, 1485-1714: Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (review)

Abstract

Elizabeth Lane Furdell has drawn upon a rich collection of primary and secondary sources in order to assemble between the covers of one book this fascinating panoply of Tudor and Stuart elite medical practitioners. It is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, covering, as it does, 330 years of medical history, and Furdell is to be congratulated on her painstaking research. Her approach is linear: starting with the reign of Henry VII and concluding with Queen Anne (not forgetting the Interregnum), we are introduced—through contemporary anecdotes, official State Papers, the Annals of the Royal College of Physicians of [End Page 428] London, and many other important sources—to the hundreds of individuals responsible for the health of successive royal households. Revealing the influence of monarchs upon the fortunes of medicine in its often uncertain advance toward professional status, the careers of medical personnel are placed in their courtly and political contexts, and the religious and political implications of royal choices are considered in the light of the shifting authoritarian imperative of an unruly medical marketplace. Entire monarchical medical establishments are reviewed, wives and children frequently proving as interesting a source of medical preference as the head of the household.