I am a lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University (United Kingdom). My research focuses on the history of Greek and Roman pharmacology and botany, with a special emphasis on gender. I have my personal blog, Concocting History, where I discuss more recipes and at times experiment with ancient concoctions: www.ancientrecipes.wordpress.com
A few years ago, my colleagues Heather Trickey (social sciences), Julia Sanders (midwifery) and I decided to put together a small exhibition on the history of infant feeding, with a focus on Wales where we are based. I immediately thought that the exhibition would benefit from the input of Terry Turner OBE, emeritus professor of Pharmacy at Cardiff University. I had met Terry on several occasions, usually in the Cardiff University staff refectory at Aberdare Hall, and knew that he would have something to contribute to the project.
Two ceramic tops for the so-called ‘murder bottles’ from Terry Turner’s personal collection. A tude was passed through the hole. Because that tube was very difficult to clean, it harboured dangerous bacteria. This type of bottle caused the death of many babies, hence the name of ‘murder bottles’. Photo: Laurence Totelin
With his habitual generosity with time and expertise, Terry accepted to talk to me and invited me to his house. In the morning that I spent with him on this occasion, I learnt more on infant feeding than I would have done reading several books. Terry showed me examples of historical feeding bottles and nipple-shields from his collections and explained how they were used; told me about the mixing of baby formulas; discussed past treatments for breast engorgement; and gave me useful insights into the commercial aspects of the pharmaceutical trade. He also returned to some of his favourite topics: the pharmacognosy of the Strychnos plant genus, with which he started his academic career (MPharm 1960); some of his adventures in collecting pharmaceutical artefacts and plant specimens; and his disdain for modern pain relief, and in particular paracetamol.
Two metallic nipple shields and their original cardboard box from Terry Turner’s personal collection. Photo: Laurence Totelin
Terence (Terry) Dudley Turner was a key actor in the pharmaceutical community in Wales. He entered the profession at the grand old age of 14, working at the renowned Cardiff Pharmacy Robert Drane. He formally registered as a pharmacist in 1955, and saw his profession change almost beyond recognition over his long career: almost gone today are the pestles and mortars, which had been the symbols of the profession for so long; almost complete now is the separation between botany and pharmacy. Terry was rightly proud of his knowledge of plants and his ability to extract from them healing substances. He travelled the world to collect plant specimens and knew their names in several vernacular languages (in addition of course to their Linnaean names).
Banana-shaped baby feeding bottles with rubber teets from Terry Turner’s personal collection. Photo: Laurence Totelin
With a changing profession in the background, Terry developed an interest in the history of pharmacy. He was a founding member of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy (established 1967), which honoured him with the Leslie Matthews Medal in 2017 for his contribution to the history of British pharmacy. He taught his students about the history of the discipline, he wrote on the topic, but above all he collected artefacts in their thousands and could tell entertaining stories about many of them.
His collection soon became too large for his residence, and he started in the early 1980s to exhibit, loan, and donate it. It is currently displayed in two main locations: the Redwood Building, Cardiff University, and in the Apothecary’s Hall at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. The Turner Collection, formally donated to Cardiff University in 2009, comprises some 1500 artefacts, exhibited over three floors of the Redwood Building, currently curated by Sarah Daly and Briony Hudson. At the National Botanic Garden of Wales, the visitor will enjoy a reconstructed historical pharmacy. While it is in many ways ahistorical, gathering in the same place artefacts produced over many decades, it does capture the feeling of being in a pharmacy around the end of the nineteenth century. I am particularly fond of the scales for weighing babies. Terry also donated and catalogued around 500 materia medica specimens for the National Museum of Wales. While these are not on display, they are a key part of the museum’s economic botany collections.
The Cultural History of Medicine, a six-volume collection under the direction of Roger Cooter, was published in April 2021 by Bloomsbury. The editors of three of its volumes happen to be past or present editors of The Recipes Project: Laurence Totelin edited volume 1 (A Cultural History of Medicine in Antiquity, 500 BCE–800 CE); Elaine Leong co-edited volume 3 with Claudia Stein (A Cultural History of Medicine in the Renaissance, 1450–1650); and Lisa Smith edited volume 4 (A Cultural History of Medicine in the Age of Enlightenment, 1650–1800). Each volume follows the same structure: an introduction, followed by chapters on Environment; Food; Disease; Animals; Objects; Experiences; the Mind/Brain; and Authority. In this post, Elaine, Laurence and Lisa share their experience of participating in the project, and discuss what the reader of The Recipes Project will find of interest in the volumes.
The Cultural History of Medicine. Reproduced with the permission of Bloomsbury.
What attracted you to this project?
Laurence: I had already contributed to one of the other Cultural Histories, the Cultural History of Womenwith a chapter co-authored with Steven Muir on ‘Medicine and Disease’. I enjoyed the format and the potential that the volumes have for teaching. So when Roger Cooter contacted me and told me about his list of chosen topics for A Cultural History of Medicine, I could not refuse. I was delighted when I heard that Elaine and Lisa would also be editors.
Lisa: Like Laurence, I loved the idea of a series on the cultural history of medicine; it seemed the right moment for delving into the topic, as the field had slowly become more cultural – taking into consideration emotions, materiality, and more. The list of topics that Roger had chosen reflected these wider concerns, including – for example – environment. It struck me that there was a lot of scope for authors to play with these themes in interesting ways, which would appeal to students and colleagues alike.
Elaine: Like Laurence and Lisa, I felt like it was the right historiographical moment to bring together such a series. I also really welcomed the opportunity to work with my co-editor Claudia Stein and the series editor Roger Cooter. As I was working in a research institute at the time, I jumped at the chance to reflect upon pedagogy with an amazing group of scholars. The authors for the ‘Renaissance’ volume met up in 2016 and it was just wonderful to spend two days discussing the various strategies we use to teach histories of early modern medicine and health, and to collaboratively create teaching materials designed for the modern classroom.
Was your experience as an editor of The Recipes Project helpful in any way when editing your volume of A Cultural History of Medicine?
Lisa: My experience on the blog gave me a lot of experience in working with authors to make their work really readable to non-academics, which I hope will appeal (especially) to students. It also made me realise just how much I enjoy writing with others. Historians still typically work alone, but over the past decade, I’ve been increasingly involved in collaborative projects of which the Cultural History of Medicine is one. In fact, collaborative work is something that helped me through the pandemic! Co-writing with others and editing (the Recipes Project and the Enlightenment volume) encouraged me to find time to write or to talk about ideas amidst the deluge of teaching and home-schooling. There is a particular joy in writing with others to create something different than what you would do on your own. Editing, too, is deeply satisfying; I enjoy helping writers to sharpen their ideas and to pull out their voices.
Laurence: I started work on this project at the same time as on another edited collection. These were my first two larger-scale editorial projects. I am really glad I had gained experience from the Recipes Project as otherwise I would have been entirely overwhelmed. I knew how to write to authors to commission work and how to edit in – hopefully – supportive manner.
Elaine: Yes, absolutely – I echo all the points raised by Laurence and Lisa above!
Had any of your authors contributed to The Recipes Project?
Elaine: Yes, a number of authors in our volume are Recipes Project contributors. Alisha Rankin, who has written about testing and trying medicines, poison trials and panaceas for the Recipes Project wrote a wonderful chapter on ‘Experiences’, skillfully covering the experience of illness, religious experience, experience and medical practice, experience and empire and experience and commerce in a mere 8000 words. I think that it would be rather hard to find a better introduction to the topic! Secondly, Olivia Weisser, who blogged about searching for syphilis in recipe books, penned a fascinating chapter on ‘Disease’ which masterfully offers a overview of various approaches to study the history of disease; detailed case studies of how early modern men and women such as Samuel Pepys (1613–1703) viewed their sickness experiences and an introduction on analysing patient’s narratives to learn more about attitudes to sickness and disease in the past. Offering both a broad historiographical overview and rich case studies, Olivia’s chapter works particularly well for seminar discussions.
Lisa: Marieke Hendriksen wrote a wonderful chapter on objects, focusing on bone as a material. She did talk a bit about recipes, such as how to clean bones and bones in remedies, though this wasn’t her focus. Erin Spinney wrote a great chapter on environment, looking at the built environment of naval and military hospitals in the Caribbean, including the defined roles of particular bodies (according to race and gender) within them. Erin was not a Recipes Project contributor, but she did work as an administrative assistant for us for a summer!
Laurence: David Leith, who wrote the ‘Brain’ chapter had contributed a post on ‘Painting Plants in Roman Egypt‘ for the Recipes Project.
Are recipes discussed in your volume?
Laurence: Recipes are mentioned here and there in various chapters: John Wilkins’ chapter on ‘Food’; Chiara Thumiger’s chapter on ‘Animals’; Rebecca Flemming’s chapter on ‘Experiences’; and my own chapter on ‘Authority’. In addition, Ido Israelowich’s chapter on the ‘Environment’; Patty Baker’s chapter on ‘Objects; and Julie Laskaris’ chapter on ‘Disease’ discuss various ingredients and treatments. Even though recipes were already well covered, I decided that they needed to be given more prominence. So I chose to centre my introduction, which was meant to be a piece of scholarship in and of itself, on a recipe which I keep returning to in my work: Mithradates’ antidote, allegedly created by the King of Pontus in the first century BCE. I found this a very useful device to introduce all the themes in the volume. In a way, that has always been what attracts me to recipes: their structuring power.
Lisa: Beyond Marieke’s chapter, no…. But E.C. Spary’s exciting chapter on food starts with the question ‘what is a food’, as she considers how its definitions are constantly contested and shaped by structures of power. This is very much the sort of thing we’re interested in at the Recipes Project! Despite the lack of recipes, I was pleased with the focus on the dark side of the Enlightenment that emerged in my volume: the tensions between imagination – or the supernatural – and reason (Roger Cooter and Claudia Stein on mind and Angela Haas on authority), the interest in human curiosities as animal-like (Monica Mattfield), and the multiple ways in which race, class and gender were inscribed on the body. It also highlights the continued, but changing, relationship between mind and body, despite the modern tendency to assume a Cartesian split in this period (Micheline Louis-Courvoisier on experiences and Lina Minou on disease).
Elaine: Yes, of course recipes are featured and in so very many of the chapters! In Olivia Weisser’s chapter on ‘Disease’, for example, recipe titles are used to explore how early modern men and women tended to define diseases as clusters of symptoms. Karin Eckholm’s illuminating chapter on ‘Animals’ explores the use of animal products in early modern medicines, outlining both the use of kitchen staples such as eggs, animal fats and honey and more costly animal ingredients such as spermaceti, ambergris and bezoar stones. Sandra Cavallo discusses recipe collections alongside notebooks and other medical texts in her chapter on ‘Objects’ and, somewhat predictably, recipes and recipe books are dotted throughout Alisha Rankin’s thoughtful chapter on ‘Experience’. Furthermore, centred on Felix Platter, Sachiko Kusuksawa’s chapter on ‘Authority’, discusses Platter’s endeavors in medicinal recipe collection and exchange whilst a student at Montpellier, and places of this kind of informal learning and networking with fellow students and professors within Platters general pursuit of medical knowledge and construction of medical authority. Finally, while recipes are not explicitly featured in Rebecca Earle’s chapter on food, diet and health or Natalie Kauokji’s chapter on environment, diet and natural conditions, these chapters would certainly be of interest to The Recipes Project readers!
In a 2015 episode of Turn, a US Revolutionary War TV drama on AMC, George Washington’s spyAbraham Woodhull uses a special ink made with alum to write secret messages under the shells of hard-boiled eggs. The technique was also advertised on the show’s Twitter in 2014, a year before the episode aired (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Teaser tweet before the airing of the episode. Image via AMC Twitter.
Turn is based on a 2006 book by Alexander Rose called Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring, but there is no mention in the book of any such technique. Instead, it seems to come from a 2009 book by John A. Nagy, Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution. That book describes an ink that is able to permeate the shell of a hard-boiled egg, leaving the message hidden inside and no trace of writing on the shell. It is not attributed to George Washington and his spies, however, but to Giambattista della Porta. Nagy writes:
“In the fifteenth century Italian scientist Giovanni Porta described how to conceal a message in a hard-boiled egg. An ink is made with an ounce of alum and a pint of vinegar. This special penetrating ink is then used to write on the hard-boiled egg shell. The solution penetrates the shell leaving no visible trace and is deposited on the surfaced of the hardened egg. When the shell is removed, the message can be read.” (John A. Nagy, Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution, 2009: 7)
“In the fifteenth century, the Italian scientist Giovanni Porta described how to conceal a message within a hard-boiled egg by making an ink from a mixture of one ounce of alum and a pint of vinegar, and then using it to write on the shell. The solution penetrates the porous shell, and leaves a message on the surface of the hardened egg albumen, which can be read only when the shell is removed.” (Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, 1999: 10)
Singh’s description of della Porta’s recipe only appears in the first edition of The Code Book. In later editions it is missing without comment. The reason might be found by reading della Porta himself, who in Book 16 chapter 4 of his Natural Magic mentions the technique, but neither claims to have invented it nor to have gotten it to work:
“Africanus teaches thus: ‘grind [oak] galls and alum with vinegar, until they have the viscosity of ink. With it, inscribe whatever you want on the egg and once the writing has been dried by the sun, place the egg in sharp brine, and having dried it, cook it, peel, and you will find the inscription.’ I put it in vinegar and nothing happened, unless by ‘brine’, he meant sharp lye, what’s normally called capitellum” (della Porta, Magia Naturalis 16.4: Latin 1590, English 1658)
Della Porta attributes the recipe to Africanus, probably Sextus Julius Africanus, a 2nd–3rd century CE traveler, writer and chronicler, whose recipe for an egg-permeating ink is preserved in the 10th century Greek compilation known as the Geoponica, of which della Porta’s recipe is a literal Latin translation. Unlike Singh’s or Nagy’s recipe, della Porta’s includes oak gall (an ingredient often found in inks as a pigment) and lacks precise measurements.
The measurements and techniques described by Singh seem similar to a recipe printed on page 143 of the 1973 New Earth Catalogue (Figures 2 and 3):
Figure 2: The New Earth Catalogue: Living Here and Now, ed. Scott French and Gnu Publishing, New York: Putnam Berkley Press, 1973. Image via MareMagnum.
Figure 3: P. 143 (detail, via Google Books Snippet View) of The New Earth Catalog: Living Here and Now.This recipe uses half the amount of vinegar. It also mentions that a small brush is to be used and says to boil the egg for 15 minutes. None of these details are in Singh’s or in della Porta’s version.
This recipe shares a strong family resemblance to a one published by the USDA in 1965, whose purpose was to get children to eat more eggs. We know this because the USDA’s suggestion was picked up by the New York Times and published on page 14 of the 29 May 1965 issue (Figure 4):
Figure 4: P. 14 (detail) of 29 May 1965 New York Times with an invisible ink recipe attributed to the USDA.
Sometime between 10 and 20 years earlier, either in 1946 or 1959, a similar version similarly targeted to children was published in volume 14 of Richards Topical Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia ordered by theme that was sold door to door in the US (Figure 5).
Figure 5: P. 136 (detail) of volume 14 of Richards Topical Encyclopedia, published either in 1946 or 1959.
Another 10 (or 20) years before that, we find the recipe on page 58 and 132 of the February 1936 issue of American Druggist. A reader from Oregon asks for the recipe of a solution used to mark eggs. The editor replies that the “trick” is described ‘in Henley’s “Book of Recipes”.’ (Figure 6)
Figure 6: P. 58 and 132 (detail) of February 1936 issue of American Druggist.
The editor’s recipe is not obviously the one “Oregon” was after (it includes neither sugar nor acid) but the details are familiar: 1 oz alum, 8 oz (= 1 cup = 1/2 pint) vinegar, a small, pointed brush, 15 minutes boiling. Some details are new: we’re told the brush should be camel’s hair (I will come back to this in the sequel).
The editor of American Druggist also gives a source: Henley’s “Book of Recipes”. The Norman W. Henley Publishing company was active in the United States in the early 20th century and beginning in 1907 published almost yearly editions of an extremely popular book of household recipes: Henley’s Twentieth Century Book of Recipes, Formulas and Processes: Containing Nearly Ten Thousand Selected Scientific, Chemical, Technical and Household Recipes, Formulas and Processes for Use in the Laboratory, the Office, the Workshop and in the Home By Gardner D. Hiscox.
Figure 7: P. 97 (detail) of January 1930 issue of Popular Science.Figure 8: 1985 reprint of p. 110 of September 1929 issue of Field and Stream.
If Henley’s was the ultimate source, the recipe had to have appeared sometime before 1929. I checked the 1925 edition, but it was nowhere to be found. The next edition was published in 1929, the same years as the Field and Stream recipe. There it was on page 786 (Figures 9 and 10):
Figure 9: P. 786 (detail) of Henley’s, the 1925 edition. No recipe.Figure 10: P. 786 (detail) of Henley’s, the 1929 edition, with the earliest version the author could find of this recipe.
The recipe contains many of the characteristics of the one that has been passed down in American lore and attributed in one form or another to George Washington’s spies or Giambattista della Porta: 1 oz. alum, ½ pint vinegar, a small brush, 15 minutes of boiling.
Given the reach of Henley’s “Book of Recipes” in the US, this is not surprising. But Henley’s recipe also lacks a key ingredient from the recipe that della Porta attributed to Africanus: oak gall. How and when this ingredient dropped out from a recipe reliably passed down for over a thousand years is another story.
This post continues a study of how a 3rd century recipe for a magic ink, despite the fact that it probably never worked, still managed to work its way into American popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. An earlier part of the study is posted here.
The island of Kea in the North Cyclades is by some travel agents’ reckoning the (rich) Athenians’ ‘best-kept secret’, their beautifully-designed stone-built villas merging seamlessly with the barren landscape overlooking the blue Aegean Sea (Fig 1).
Fig. 1 Private house in Orkos, looking east. To the SE on can see the island of Kythnos. (c) Effie Photos-Jones
The scenery is even more spectacular in the south and in the east of the island. Although sparsely populated today, this area was from the mid of the 19th century and well into the early part of the 20th century, a hive of activity, on account of the extensive underground workings of the seams of lead and iron ores. Today, miners’ cottages stand derelict, perhaps waiting for a buyer to convert them into holiday homes. But the ground underneath Petroussa, Orkos or Trypospilies (Fig 2 map) is riddled with galleries, some dating as early as the 4th century BCE. These early galleries were opened with one aim in mind: to access miltos (Fig. 3c).
Fig. 2. A map of Kea with its four ancient city states and the miltos names Orkos, Petroussa, Trypospilies. (c) Effie Photos-Jones
The material they called miltos is a composite one consisting of naturally fine iron oxides (hematite/goethite) with small amounts of calcite, quartz and clay minerals. It made its first appearance in the Bronze Age Linear B clay tablets as mi-to-we-sa. The Mycenaeans, acutely aware of colours, had many names for red, miltos being, we think, a red with a deep purple hue. It would be many centuries before Kea miltos would surface again in the literary record, always as the colour red but also as a whole host of materials whose colour merited that name. In the 4th century BCE Theophrastus (On Stones, 52) tells us that builders and joiners used it to draw a line with, workers in shipyards used it for ship maintenance and if the miltos came from the island of Lemnos, then it was used as a medicine, as well, and against ‘poison’.
Fig. 3a. Entrance or exit to/from a precipitous gallery at Orkos. (c) Effie Photos-Jones
Fig. 3b. Samples of miltos from Trypospilies (left) and Orkos (right). (c) Effie Photos-Jones.
Fig. 3c. Inside a more accessible gallery at Orkos. (c) Effie Photos-Jones
From the above it is clear that miltos was a valuable commodity. But how valuable? An Athenian decree carved on a marble inscription found in the Athenian Agora and dated c. 360 BCE tells us exactly how valuable. The decree was issued by Athens to all the three city states of Kea (Ioulis, Korisseia and Karthaia (Fig. 2) requiring each one of them to export miltos in its entirety from their respective mines, exclusively to Athens; also for the Keans to bear the charges for the transport and only in an Athenian boat! The tone is severe and the penalties dire. The decree appears to openly invite a slave to denounce his master, if the latter is suspected of selling his miltos to a third party. It stipulates that the slave would be gaining not only his freedom but would also receive half of his masters’ estate!
Another contemporary inscription, more informative than severe, also from Athens mentions miltos mixed with pitch, the miltopissa. And at an even later date (3rd century CE), the author of an agricultural manual, recommends miltos for pest control. It suggests miltos should be smeared around the roots of trees ‘to prevent trees and vines from being harmed by worms or anything else’.
So what was the rationale behind all these diverse uses of miltos? was it a case of ‘since we have it …we might as well use it!’ or did antiquity have a more subtle understanding of this valuable natural material which has so far eluded us? We have been investigating….
As was mentioned miltos consists of very fine iron oxides with particle sizes ranging in the nanosized range. There are also impurities of lead, zinc, copper and arsenic within. But beyond its mineral components, Kean miltos also had an organic load. By that we mean microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and other which live around miltos, are feeding on miltos and also alter the environment around it (Fig 3). We became aware of these microorganisms through DNA sequencing of the miltos samples. Given that red Kean miltos was never heated but used in the ‘as was’ state it is almost certain that these microorganisms would have been carried along with the minerals. When the microorganisms died, they would release biomolecules (secondary metabolites), many of which are known to have numerous beneficial properties, as antibacterials, antifungals, antioxidants or other.
The diagram below (Fig. 4) gives a schematic illustration of the dual nature of Kean miltos, as a combination of both a biotic (microorganisms and biomolecules) and an abiotic (elements, nanoparticles, minerals) component. It is the ‘intersection’ between the two components that gives rise to miltos’ diverse applications.
Fig. 4. Miltos’ diverse properties deriving from their biotic and abiotic components. (c) Effie Photos-Jones
When miltos is mixed with resin or pitch and applied on wood it is the toxic trace elements within which would inhibit the growth of deleterious biofilms. The same mixture could be used as pest control, by preventing the growth of microorganisms/ insects threatening tree health. If on the other hand, when miltos was mixed with water, the toxic trace elements within, mostly insoluble, would have little effect. Instead, it would be its biome, in the shape of bacteria which help the growth of plants, by making nutrients bioavailable at the root level, which would render miltos a good fertiliser. In short, each application appears, to have called upon and with confidence, either the biotic or abiotic component of miltos depending on the ‘problem’ at hand. No wonder the Athenians were taking no chances with the Keans and their miltos.
We have for long considered miltos a good and ‘special’ red pigment. But all along, it has been way more than that. The Athenians had made a shrewd assessment of this natural material and as an all-powerful city state they imposed their might on their allies. With the demise of the Athenian hegemony in the region, the importance of Kean miltos faded only to give prominence to that of Cappadocia traded through its Black Sea port of Sinope (Sinopic miltos).
Further Reading
Lytle, E. (2013). Farmers Into Sailors: Ship Maintenance, Greek Agriculture, and the Athenian Monopoly on Kean Ruddle (IG II 2 1128). Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 53(3), 520-550.
Photos-Jones, E., Cottier, A., Hall, A. J., & Mendoni, L. G. (1997). Kean Miltos: The well-known iron oxides of antiquity. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 92, 359-371.
Photos-Jones, E. et al. (2018). Greco-Roman mineral (litho) therapeutics and their relationship to their microbiome: The case of the red pigment miltos. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 22, 179-192.
EPJ is a Senior Honorary Researcher at the University of Glasgow at the Schools of Humanities and of Earth and Geographical Sciences. She has been researching the metals and industrial minerals of the Greco-Roman world for over 40 years and more recently their pharmacological applications
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