A Christmas renaissance

Which famous book covers uroscopy, amputation, hysteria, dementia, syphilis, midwifery, gout, poisons, homeopathy, fistulas, nursing, epidemics, death, toothache, sphygmology, constipation, dyscrasia, and astrology? A book that also includes written portraits of physicians, surgeons, and quacks and is itself therapeutic?

The answer is not a medical textbook but the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, an opportune moment to remember the contributions he and other Renaissance writers made to literature, and the influence that the era’s growing interest in medicine and surgery had on their writing.

Shakespeare’s interest in what we now call psychology is obvious. His plays investigate human emotions at key moments in life. The heroes and heroines in the comedies negotiate marriage; Henry IV has a problematic teenage son; Hamlet copes with bereavement; King Lear deals with empty nest syndrome …