Experiencing illness and the sick body in early modern Europe

Illness was ubiquitous in early modern society. Health was constantly threatened and medicine often proved powerless. Based on his analysis of contemporary autobiographical writing, of thousands of letters which the sick and their relatives sent to physicians of the time and of a wide range of other sources, Michael Stolberg describes how early modern people coped with pain and disease, how they interacted with physicians and other healers and how they tried to make sense of their suffering. He presents the ideas and imagesthat peopleassociated with commonly diagnosed diseases such as phthisis, gout, cancer, dropsy or fever. The first thorough and comprehensive overview of the early modern experience and lay interpretation of illness, Stolberg also traces the impact of new medical theories on ordinary people's medical views.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.