Gore blimey! New exhibition looks at Tudor medicine

A brilliant new medical exhibition has opened at Hall’s Croft, home of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her physician husband, John Hall (1575 – 1635).

Method in the Madness: Understanding Ourselves Then and Now explores medicine in the lifetime of Shakespeare’s son-in-law. Find out how John and his patients understood their bodies and minds and how this influenced medical practice. Learn about advances in anatomy and physiology and how the quest to better understand ourselves continues even today.

The exhibition features a wealth of objects from the 1500s and 1600s including a syringe, a urine flask and a drug jar alongside books such as Robert Burton’s famous The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Visitors can diagnose their own patients, comparing urine samples to the uroscopy wheel – where wee colour indicates certain maladies!