THE SURGEON, THE MIDWIFE, THE QUACK by Alanna Skuse: Think you're having a baby? Bite your husband's bottom

It is sometime in the 1680s and a young boy lies dying in his parents’ London house.

A year ago, he was knocked over by a cart, shattering his leg. The limb has become rotten with gangrene and, because it is folded up beneath him, the heel has become permanently stuck to the buttock.

The boy has begged for amputation, but the operation is so likely to end in death that no ­surgeon will risk it for fear of ruining his reputation.

In desperation, the parents reach out to Charles II’s surgeon, Hugh Ryder, who agrees to amputate.

Instead of attempting to tie off the arteries in the thigh, Ryder cauterises the wound immediately, using red hot irons which cause the child to cry out in agony (anaesthetic lies 200 years in the future).

The operation is done on the ­Monday and by Thursday the boy is almost back to complete health.

Alanna Skuse opens her fascinating book on Renaissance medicine with this case history because it so neatly captures the topsy-turvy contradictions of the era. On the one hand, it conjures a scene that is almost medieval in its schlocky body horror. On the other, it demonstrates how medical men like Ryder were beginning to build a profession built on knowledge, skill and the ability to take calculated risks. And they were calculated.

Accusations of incompetence, or worse still witchcraft, were a constant professional liability. And it’s important to remember that alongside Ryder’s forward-thinking style, there were plenty of men and women of the 17th century who were mired in the old ways of doing things.

Elizabeth Okeover’s ‘Oil of frogs good for all aches’ required a ‘good store of frogs’ to be put alive in an earthen pot and roasted in the oven. Elizabeth Freke recommended ‘the head of a coal-black cat’ burnt to ashes and applied to the eyes as a cure for poor sight.

Mostly, though, Renaissance medicine was a curious jumble of sensible and dotty.

John Ward was a clergyman in Stratford-upon-Avon who also doubled as an unofficial GP to the local community, which included descendants of Shakespeare’s family.

Yet one can only feel alarm for any pregnant women he was called to attend, given that he was convinced that the foetus stayed alive by breathing in oxygen through the mother’s ‘privities’ or private parts.

Female writers on pregnancy were not ­necessarily better informed. Midwife and published author Jane Sharp advised any couple trying to conceive to eat the brains of sparrows or pigeons or, for serious cases, to take a dram of milk in which boar’s testicles had been suspended.

If a woman wasn’t sure whether these bizarre treatments had done the trick, Sharp had more sage advice. Did the would-be mother, by any chance, long to bite off a piece of her husband’s buttocks? If so, she could rest assured that she was truly expecting.