ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the casebook of Dr Barker of Shrewsbury for the years 1595 to 1605, that of a physician probably practising in Cambridge between 1619 and 1622, and the notes and correspondence of John Symcotts for the years between 1633 and 1660. Seventeenth-century medicine has received more attention from historians than has seventeenth-century surgery. Symcotts was an almost exact contemporary of Joseph Binns. Symcotts was a rural practitioner, his casebook compares rural with urban circumstances. It identifies similarities and differences in the practice of medicine and surgery in the same period. The correspondence printed in Poynter and Bishop's edition of Symcotts's papers provides an excellent opportunity for us to explore the physician's relationships with his patients. Like Symcotts and Binns, Barker's orientation towards diagnosis and therapy was humoral. Unlike the other healers whose casebooks are consulted, Barker was interested in the prophylaxis of plague.
