E. C. Ambrose

E. C. Ambrose

  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    re: choosing what to include. This was tricky. The choice of a barber as the protagonist, and the fact that he almost immediately goes to war, means that, for example, the theory of the four humors gets pretty short shrift...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    Wow,I get snow-bound for a couple of days and you guys totally run with it! That's awesome. (do you have roof-rakes in the UK? Let me tell you, being on a ladder in a wind-storm trying to pull icicles off...
  • Commented on New guest blogger: E. C. Ambrose
    The whole series actually arose from research I was doing for a scene in The Eunuch's Heir (one of my Elaine Isaak titles) where I wanted to know a little bit more about historical medicine to treat the protagonist's injuries....
  • Commented on New guest blogger: E. C. Ambrose
    If you go to my website (thedarkapostle.com) I have a bibliography with some of the references I used. A year or two into my research, they came out with a translation of Guy de Chauliac's Chirurgia Magna, which is a...
  • Commented on New guest blogger: E. C. Ambrose
    I got to see Kodo in Boston not long ago--they were fantastic!...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    One of my historical inspirations, Ambroise Pare, used to say "I stitched him up, and God healed him." So yes, there is often a sense when you read the documents of the time, that God's hand is involved in medicine....
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    The use of trepanation for compressed skull fractures has been going on for a very long time (as commenter Dromeaopunk observes)--much of the evidence we have is from ancient Peru, again, including a large percentage of skulls that show bone...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    this is a great idea--let me know when you've got the kinks worked out!...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    that's perfect--thanks for sharing!...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    Yes! The in-fighting between classes of practitioners at the time was incredible. There was a lot of overlap in simple procedures between the surgeons and the barbers, which ended with the surgeons getting frustrated because the barbers usually charged less....
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    Are you thinking in terms of prescribing remedies? During my period, most of the compounds were notoriously based on their relation to the humors, so if a person's humoral balance was considered to be hot and moist, they would be...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    Apothecaries begin to emerge in England around the time of my work (14th century) and there's one mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales--but they become much more prevalent in the 16th century (their guild company in London was...
  • Posted A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages to Charlie's Diary
    There's a lot of concern about health care on both sides of the pond these days, with the recent worries about the National Health Service, and regime change in America bent on rolling back the benefits his predecessor put in place. In fact, one editorial to my regional newspaper had a headline that feared a return to the Dark Ages. As a researcher into the history of medicine, all I could think was, they don't know much about the Dark Ages, do they? So here, for those who would like to make their comparisons more apt, is a basic primer to medical care through the 14th century.
  • Posted This test blog entry now has a title to Charlie's Diary Test Bed
    Hi, there! I am trying out Charlie's testbed for the first time. Here's some text. In a moment, I hope to include a link. So, here is a link So far, so good. Next up, an image, like this one. and now, to see how it looks. Wish me luck!...
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