This book is an invitation to reconceptualize early modern Welsh social history through a consideration of its people's experience of sickness and healing. Far from being an insular and folklore-dominated backwater, Withey argues that the region was influenced by British and European streams of medical knowledge and consumption. The Welsh experienced a kind of modernization of healing arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, albeit on terms peculiar to their “traditional” society. Moreover, Withey suggests that despite having a small population and being located on the fringe of Britain, Wales has much to teach us about early modern medicine. Indeed, these two paradoxes are the heart of the book.

Following an introductory chapter on the study of Welsh medical history, the book is divided into three main sections. The first and shortest explores the landscape of disease in Wales, noting some of the ways—such as the incidence of plague—that the region was distinct from England. The second section concerns the production and circulation of medical knowledge, beginning with a chapter about popular ideas of illness and the body. Withey notes that although the region did not have the same institutions for generating medical knowledge as England, its people were receptive to new ideas. Moreover, in certain cases, religious attachment facilitated the dissemination of novel healing practices. The third chapter looks at the spread of medical information, which Withey argues was augmented by the Welsh propensity to share orally knowledge that was originally conveyed in English printed texts. An important consequence of this sharing culture, however, was the Anglicization of the language of illness and medical terminology. However, the assimilation of English words is taken by Withey as proof that early modern Wales was plugging into a broader and orthodox medical milieu. The following chapter focuses on the economy of medical knowledge, which emphasises the importance of social networks—kinship, friendship, employment—grounded on exchanging useful information. A comparison of printed English medical texts and handwritten Welsh remedy collections shows that the region's traditionally lively oral culture was crucial for the diffusion of new knowledge. The third section turns to systems and structures of care and treatment. The fifth chapter, based mostly on probate inventories, begins with a discussion of available home care remedies and ends by pointing out that by 1700 most people had access through their local apothecary to the “latest” medical remedies. The Welsh were thus engaged in the early modern marketplace of orthodox medical treatments. Sickness and the “sick role” take up the next chapter. Withey helpfully points out that the Parsonian conception of the sick role ignores the reality of many women who could be “sick,” while still performing work at home. He also suggests that the sick role was secularized over the eighteenth century as more people who wrote about their condition in letters put their bodies rather than their souls at the center of their narratives. The seventh chapter looks at who cared for the sick. Once again, Withey shows that the usual suspects—women and folk healers—represent only part of the gamut of carers. While women were expected to be the primary care givers, heads of households collected and shared medical information, and increasing numbers of male healing practitioners adopted the title of “doctor” and used English medical terms, which Withey suggests probably stemmed from a desire to set themselves off from traditional lay healers. The final substantive chapter expands from the level of individuals to communal approaches to healing. Here also Withey suggests that previous assessments of the country's healthcare infrastructure have missed its positive aspects by focusing on its comparative—in relation to England—lack of institutions. Early modern Wales had an admittedly family-centered and ad hoc system of care provision, which was nevertheless well ordered and effective, as the record of disbursements made by Llanfyllin parish to the sick poor in the 1670s demonstrates. The conclusion reiterates Withey's central contention that early modern Wales was a country pulling simultaneously in two directions: at once predominantly oral, parochially focused, folkloric, and traditional as well as receptive to new knowledge imported from English printed texts, with consumers eager to purchase new medicines.

The book has a clear revisionist argument that is for the most part convincing. When the Welsh got sick, they did not attempt to get well only through folk remedies and prayer but were also open to trying new and increasingly orthodox medical treatments. Thus, Withey's argument is anti-antiteleological: he sees genuine evidence of progress toward modernity in the country's approach to sickness and healing from 1650 to 1800, but the Welsh mode of progress was facilitated by its people's traditional culture, particularly their willingness to circulate knowledge orally. That this willingness prompted people to rethink the meaning of sickness is suggested by his section on the increasing focus on the body in letters describing illness, but a greater attention to shifts in meaning over the period would have given the argument additional nuance. While there is ample discussion of the increasing social breadth of orthodox medical knowledge, the velocity of its circulation over time and in different parts of the country is mostly passed over. This is probably partly a function of the surviving sources and does not detract from the monograph's importance. Withey's book has, paradoxically, put the Celtic periphery at the center of developments in early modern medicine in Britain.