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In a recent article in a 'Sunday Telegraph' supplement, Dr. James Le
Fanu features a Stratford physician, Dr. John Hall (died 1635), who is famous for marrying
William Shakespeare's daughter, Susanna. Our Society received a talk in 1997 by Dr. Joan
Lane on this very physician, so this spotlight in the Sunday paper naturally caught our
eye. The contents of the article further caught our eye when we read that he had a patient
from Alcester, by name John Emes, a boy of 15 who suffered from enuresis (bed wetting).
Dr. Hall's casebook gives the remedy by which he cured John: the windpipe of a cock, dried
and made into powder and given in a raw egg every morning! Dr. Le Fanu gives no dates but
our names index may give a clue.
We have dozens of entries in our distinctly old-fashioned card index for the Emes family - a prolific family in the 17th century in Alcester and containing many 'Johns'. The most likely candidate is one so named who was born in 1608, 50 his visit to Dr. Hall would be in 1623. John Emes grew to be a weaver and a mercer like others in his family: we have never met with a poor mercer in Alcester, so we may suppose that the family was fairly well-off; John's father, probably having consulted the doctors nearer home, could have afforded to pay the fees of Dr. Hall, who 'by 1623 had acquired an enviable reputation.
Shakespeare made various references in his plays to medical matters but, as far as we know, did not mention cockerells' Windpipes
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