Remote and Rural Remedies

Описание: The Highlands and Islands of Scotland hold a unique place in medical history. Particular challenges, such as geographical distance, famine and economic instability and shifting patterns of land ownership, combined to create precarious living circumstances for both physicians and patients.

This talk will explore medicine in the Highlands over 600 years, from women healers and Jacobite medicine to the Highland Clearances. It will also delve into the medicines which were used, including locally sourced ingredients such as rhubarb and seaweed.

Through our examination of Highlands medicine we will uncover the relationships between the Highlands and the rest of Scotland, via influential Celtic medical families such as the Beatons, and the waves of quacks, or charlatans, who visited the Highlands to sell their wares.

Daisy Cunynghame completed an MA in Modern History at the University of St Andrews and a Higher Diploma in Archival Studies at University College Dublin. She is the Heritage Manager & Librarian for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. She was awarded her PhD by the University of Edinburgh in 2020. The focus of this work was ‘The Roles of the Edinburgh, Kelso, and Newcastle Dispensaries in Charitable Relief, 1776-1810’. Her research investigates public health initiatives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Scotland and the north of England, with a particular focus on the patient experience within the dispensary system.