ABSTRACT
Because of trade restrictions that were enforced by the City's guild and livery companies, many immigrants gravitated toward those areas in the city where corporate control was at its weakest, namely the former ecclesiastical Liberties, the suburbs, and the areas within the city walls just adjacent to the old gates. What these areas had in common was greater freedom, greater space, and a more equitable mix of English and Strangers than could often be found in the center of the City in neighborhoods that were largely controlled by the guilds and livery companies. There the organizations fostered their own sense of community that was based not on neighborhoods, but on
PARACELSIAN THERAPEUTICS AND THE MEDICAL MARKET:
COMPETITION, COLLABORATION, AND CONFLICT
It was Paracelsus and his remedies, however, that most polarized the English and alien medical practitioners. One of the most notorious and welldocumented showdowns between Paracelsian advocates and opponents involved Valentine Russwurin ofSchmalkald.31 Self-described as a "Medicus spagirirus opt[halamistus]/2 Russwurin was made denizen by Elizabeth in 1574 at the same time that he was practicing his Paracelsian remedies on the London population.33 Russwurin's London career became problematic when he took up the cure of Helen Currance, a musician's wife, on 3 April 1574. In the presence of witnesses, Russwurin "did attempt with his instruments to have taken out of her bladder a stone." The witnesses later alleged that "finding none there, privily he tooke a stone out of the pocket of his hose ... conveyed it into a spunge ... [and] forst it in Pudendo."34 When this procedure failed to relieve her discomfort, Russwurin sent her a powder that made it impossible for her to urinate. Uncomfortable side effects from the powder included blisters in her mouth, nose, face, and "inward parts of her bodie," which rendered her unable to eat.
