William Clowes, the greatest of the Elizabethan surgeons, published the first original English treatise on syphilis. It was his first work; it demonstrates the prevalence of the disease at that time (Clowes says that of every 20 persons admitted to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 15 were found to be suffering from syphilis). Facsimile reprint, New York, Da Capo Press, 1972.

An interesting picture of Elizabethan surgery is given by William Clowes in this book on gunshot wounds. Clowes, the best surgical writer in Elizabethan times, was surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. In amputation he covered the stump with integument – an earlier form of the flap method. The Selected Writings of William Clowes were edited by F. N. L. Poynter, London, 1949.