6 - Family Matters

Summary

Abstract: Chapter Six considers the extent to which sickroom attendants were bound by gendered conceptions of modesty. Women, despite being core figures in domestic medical treatment, were not a ubiquitous feature in the sick chamber of genitourinary patients. Their presence was dictated by the life cycle. Women were prominent in the care of prepubescent bodies, but as the body aged into manhood, women's presence diminished. Instead, men were described as being accompanied by ‘friends’, a term that implied a much more masculine space and gendered discussion. Understanding these dynamics provides a balance to existing scholarship, which has unpicked the gendered relationships between male practitioners and female patients, by showing that modesty bound not just women's access to care but men's as well.

Keywords: modesty; gendered care; friends; sickroom attendants; relatives

In December 1650 M. Stenning, a fifty-year-old man, made a tiring journey on horseback. That evening he ‘fell into a total suppression of urine’ which caused ‘terrible pain in his pubes and back’. Before being seen by the physician and natural philosopher Thomas Willis, Stenning was attended by his friends. These well-meaning companions gave him ‘many remedies’ that they ‘tried empirically’. Unfortunately, their good intentions were misplaced, and after they gave him diuretics, his conditions deteriorated. Stenning's experience typified early modern approaches to medical care where patients were attended by both medical practitioners and family and friends. Friends and family, as we have seen, were important sources of medical information and remedies. Conversations with kin and community were not always restricted by sentiments of embarrassment associated with intimate conditions, but rather the existing social standing, reputation, and trust between friends allowed for a frank discussion of ailments that had the potential to disrupt the manliness of the body. Friends and family were also central figures in the sickroom. Visiting the sick provided men and women with an opportunity for self-reflection; relationships with family and friends were also negotiated through patients’ performances of suffering in this space. This chapter investigates the extent to which the support of friends and family was a gendered practice. It argues that men suffering from genitourinary conditions were not entirely constrained by gendered notions of modesty and so were treated and supported by their female relatives to different degrees throughout the life cycle.

Women were key participants in the sickroom. Women in early modern England provided medical assistance to those in their families, households, and communities.