Shakespeare’s son-in-law medic had a taste for theatrical cures

JOHN HALL was William Shakespeare’s physician son-in-law, friend and travel companion, but relatively little is known about him.

Now his 400-year-old Latin medical casebook has been translated into English in full for the first time, revealing a scholarly man who kept abreast of the latest medical advances across Europe and prescribed sometimes blood-curdling, though seemingly effective, treatments involving everything from dying pigeons to live worms.

Although Hall did not refer to his father-in-law within his 191-page manuscript, he detailed treatments administered to members of his family, including his wife, Susanna, Shakespeare’s eldest daughter; and their daughter, Elizabeth, the only grandchild that Shakespeare knew.

In a manuscript that he modestly titled A Little Book of Cures, Hall recorded symptoms and treatments in 178 cases dating from 1611 to 1635. In 1630, he wrote of Susanna’s condition, which suggested scurvy: “Lower backache, convulsions, diseased gums, foul-smelling breath, wind, melancholy….” Hall prescribed medication that included wine boiled with steel filings. For Elizabeth, who was “disfigured by spasm of the mouth”, he prepared various oils.

When the Earl of Northampton complained of a sore throat, Hall’s remedy was: “Two whole swallows’ nests, including straw, dirt, and swallows’ droppings. Boil in oils of chamomile and lilies. Pound them and filter through a sieve of bristles. Add droppings from dogs which have eaten bones… Make a poultice in the form of a plaster.” It had “the desired outcome”, he noted.

Paul Edmondson, head of research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, (SBT) edited the new edition, which was started by the late Greg Wells, his friend and a medical expert, who died in 2017, unaware that it had been accepted for publication. Wells had gone back to Hall’s original manuscript, which is preserved today in the British Library, after realising that a version published in 1657 by another medical man, James Cooke, was seriously incomplete.

Mr Edmondson said he was particularly excited because the new translation shows that Hall used passages from more than 60 contemporary textbooks. “Greg Wells identified for the first time that about 40 per cent of Hall’s casebook is lifted from other medical textbooks of Hall’s own time,” he said. “This puts Shakespeare’s son-in-law at the heart of medical minds in Europe. We’ve never known this before… it’s a groundbreaking piece of work.”

The new edition, titled John Hall, Master of Physicke, is published this weekend by Manchester University Press in association with the SBT. Mr Edmondson will give an evening talk on it, followed by a discussion, on March 24 at The British Library.