A few people have asked me about reading on Puritans and I’ve noted that pretty much any modern history book will provide a version that confounds the popular narrative, but I’m currently reading a book that is just fascinating and gives huge insight into the mentality of the men who fought the civil war. 

Eric Gruber Von Arni was himself a military nurse. I think Justice to the Maimed Soldier started as his PhD with Gerald Aylmer, one of the great early modern historians 

The book has a short chapter on Royalist medical care for its soldiers: careless, poorly organised, and soldiers regarded as disposable. 

The rest of the book is about the Parliamentary establishment of hospitals, local services, actual medical care surgeons v physicians (tip, pick the Surgeons, they followed Paracelsus, the Physicians preferred Galen: the Surgeons also tended to be Puritans and the physicians Royalist; the surgeons shared knowledge and techniques, the Physicians got upset when one of their number “revealed” their secrets), nursing which is remarkably ‘modern’ and I’ve just got to the bit where soldiers were sent to Bath to take the waters. Soldiers and widows received pensions. 

Although Parliament struggled to find the money at times and particularly by the end, the sense of responsibility for the men injured in their service is strong. 

There is also a very good chapter on the use of herbals, dietary beliefs, and cleanliness in the wards invaluable for any fiction writer. Come on! Someone write me a Surgeon /Nurse romance set in 1650! (Note that nurses-who tended to be widows- were fired for marrying patients). 

He’s also rather good on framing the Reformation as effectively the dissolution of a form of welfare state, and in demonstrating that the value of women’s work was recognised.