On the “Oil of Swallows”, Part 1: Did anyone actually use these outrageous remedies?

By Michelle DiMeo, with Rebecca Laroche

Part of the appeal of old medical remedies is that many are filled with seemingly outrageous ingredients. A recipe “For deaffnesse” attributed to Sir Kenelm Digby, Fellow of the Royal Society, required one to “Take a hare new killed, Take out the bladder in which you will still find some urine … soe pouer into each eare by degrees”. The recipe concludes by suggesting one continue to do this “for several dayes with new hares”.[1] The chemist Robert Boyle’s medical remedy book includes plenty of unsavory ingredients, including wood lice and earth worms, as well a treatment for dysentery that involves drinking baked pig’s dung.[2] This, coupled with the fact that many early modern recipe books do not show all the burns, spills and edits one would expect to find in a heavily used book, leads to the question:  did anyone actually make these recipes? If so, how’d they accomplish it?

The “Oil of Swallows” is one such remedy. An early version may be found in Thomas Dawson’s The Good Husvvifes Ievvel [Housewife’s Jewel] from 1587, which begins “Take eight Swallowes readie to flie out of the nest, driue away the breeders when you take them out, and let them not touch the earth, stampe them vntill the Fethers can not be perceiued” (fols. 50r-50v). It also requires the addition of approximately five herbs to be mixed with butter, and it eventually produces an oil that should be externally applied to aches and bruises.

The recipe continues to evolve over the next 100 years and seems increasingly less believable. By the mid-seventeenth century, “Oil of Swallows” is almost ubiquitous in recipe books; however, the number of swallows greatly increases, as do the number of additional ingredients. This may be due to certain print versions of the recipe, such as that found in Gervase Markham’s The English House-vvife (1615), which requires more than two dozen separate ingredients and as many as 20 live swallows. This example from an anonymous manuscript compiled over the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries requires over twenty ingredients and “twenty Young Quick Swallows”, showing just how complicated the recipe became:

Late-17th-Century Recipe for "Oil of Swallows"
Wellcome Library, Western MS 1795, fol. 222v

A historian’s first instinct might be to dismiss this as a remedy that was never actually tried. After all, how did they catch 20 live birds, and how did they beat them all in a mortar without the birds flying away? However, a closer reading of how the recipe language evolved over time shows contemporaries trying to sort through these complicated issues, providing tips for how and when to capture the birds, and what to do if you can’t get enough. Dawson’s recipe, quoted above, is an early example of this.[3]

But perhaps the best evidence that the “Oil of Swallows” was used is an undeniable reference to the final product in Elizabeth Isham’s autobiographical “Rememberance”, written around 1639. Isham recalls having a recurring pain in her thigh in her early adulthood. In her closet, she found a glass jar, which, upon opening, she “thought it to be by the smell oiles of swallowes”. She deduced that it must be about 40 years old and that it was made by her great grandmother “Who was … very skillful in Surgery”. Isham’s aunt “thought it might have some virtue because it retained the sent [scent]. Being close stoped.” So Isham applied the ointment to her aching thigh and found some relief, noting that “it [came] foorth in a rednes and after weared away by de grees”.[4]

Isham’s “Rememberance” makes it impossible for us to deny that the “Oil of Swallows” was actually made, and it provides contextual information to help us better understand the recipe.  If we continue to read recipes against other available archival material, including letters, diaries, and account books, we might continue to find surprising evidence that these seemingly outrageous remedies really were tried and approved. But while Isham testifies to the use of “Oil of Swallows”, we still don’t know exactly which ingredients comprised the final product she tried. And as Rebecca Laroche will explain in Part 2 of this blog post on Thursday, the ingredients in this remedy were sometimes even stranger than just swallows and herbs…

 

This blog entry has been from adapted research used in the essay Michelle DiMeo and Rebecca Laroche, “On Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Oil of Swallows’: Animal Slaughter and Early Modern Women’s Medical Recipes” in Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity, ed. Jennifer Munroe and Rebecca Laroche (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) pp. 87-104.


[1] British Library, Sloane MS 1367, fol. 19v. Contractions have been silently expanded.

[2] Robert Boyle, Medicinal Experiments (London, 1692), p. 7.

[3] For more examples, and for a more detailed analysis of the language, see the original essay on which this blog post was based: Michelle DiMeo and Rebecca Laroche, “On Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Oil of Swallows’: Animal Slaughter and Early Modern Women’s Medical Recipes” in Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity, eds. Jennifer Munroe and Rebecca Laroche (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) pp. 87-104.

[4] Elizabeth Isham, “My Booke of Rememberance”, Princeton University Library, Robert H. Taylor Collection RTC01 no.62, fols. 26v-27r. For an open-access modern spelling edition, see Constructing Elizabeth Isham, dirs.. Elizabeth Clarke and Erica Longfellow, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/isham/

Chicken Soup for…

By Sally Osborn

Chicken soup is one of our modern panaceas for all ills, but it was also used as medicine in the eighteenth century. However, while nowadays it is associated with treating colds and flu (and has actually been proved to have anti-inflammatory properties), then it appears to have been considered as a stomach remedy. Take this rather graphic recipe from a collection of recipes by an unknown hand (British Library, Add 29,435):

An exelent chicken broath, from Mrs Finch

Take a lean chicken, skin it & draw it put one ounce of fine
manna in the body of it, & secure it at both ends to keep the
manna in, put it in one quart of water & let it boyl gently
till it comes to one pint, then strain it off, & drink a coffe
cup full at a time till it hath answered the purpose of giving
a stool.

Tis so very innocent a woman in child bed may take it
at any time or an infant. It is perticularly good to procure
a stool in the piles, or for any great heat in the body or
complaint in the stomach when such a medison is proper
as it also comforts the stomach & bowels at the same time it
works off & often proves effectual when all medisons have failed.

The manna in question wasn’t the wonder food of the Israelites, but the dried sap of the ash tree, which has laxative properties…

Mind you, I think I might prefer an alternative (and not so innocent) remedy for the ‘looseness’ or diarrhoea, from another anonymous collection (Wellcome Library, MS.1321)– although it does sound more like a hangover cure:

Take 6 spoonfulls of the best brandy & beat the yolk of an egge very
well & mix with it & grate in a whole nuttmegg & put in a little sugar
& brew it well together & drink it next your heart in a morning.

Apologies for cross-posting. This post appeared on my own blog Travels and Travails in 18th-Century England (14 January 2011).

‘The Art of Distillation’: Alchemy in Eighteenth-Century Recipe Books

By Katherine Allen

Two aspects of eighteenth-century recipe books that interest me are the use of distillation in domestic medicine and the relationship between print and manuscript sources of medical and scientific knowledge. Rebecca Tallamy’s recipe book beautifully illustrates the union of both these aspects as she recorded her recipes in a 1691 edition of John French’s ‘The Art of Distillation’. This alchemical guide was one of many published in late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century England, and it reflects the popularity of Paracelsianism and the growth of distillation in industry. We can therefore use this manuscript to explore briefly the ways in which the household acted as a space where domestic knowledge interacted with social and cultural developments in distillation.

The Art of Distillation
Wellcome, WMS 4759, f. 1r.

Like many recipe books, this manuscript was a family collection. The ownership tag ‘Rebecca Tallamy her book of Receipts’ appears several times, however Patience and William Tallamy were also named as owners. Evidently, the Paracelsian alchemical guide was owned by a member of the Tallamy family and presumably handed down until Rebecca gained ownership, recording her recipes between the years 1735-38. A few recipes were added by a later hand in the early nineteenth century, thus emphasising the multi-generational use of this distillation text/recipe collection.

Rebecca Tallamy's Title
Wellcome, WMS 4759, f. 40v.

But, what is distillation? Distillation is a process used to separate mixtures and purify liquids that was used by alchemists and natural philosophers to experiment in hopes of making gold, the Elixir of Life, and a range of medical cures. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some elite households had stills for making medical waters, which were used to combat indigestion and low spirits.

What is distillation?
Wellcome, WMS 4759, f. 2r.

The manuscript is approximately 500 pages, and the majority of the pages contain printed text with handwritten additions scribbled in the margins, between figures, and overtop of text. The remaining recipes were recorded on the blank pages added at the end of the book. Rebecca’s additions included culinary recipes, housekeeping notes, and a standard collection of medicinal recipes like ‘For a Feaverish Disorder in Children or others’, which involved a poultice of tobacco and currants wrapped on the wrists (f. 28v.). This simple recipe is juxtaposed beside a detailed figure of a distillation furnace and signifies that, through the act of recording recipes, Rebecca Tallamy engaged with technical instructions on distillation. Moreover, some of her recipes were traditional cordial waters prepared via distillation. I should note it is likely that Rebecca copied at least some of her material from other sources simply because there are many duplicate recipes. There are also a number of copied botanical descriptions at the end of the manuscript resembling those found in Nicholas Culpeper’s ‘The English Physician’. Far from being purely a collection of recipes, Rebecca Tallamy’s book encompasses several genres and text types, demonstrating the scope of natural knowledge used in the home.

Distillation Furnace
Wellcome, WMS 4759, f. 28v.

The combination of manuscript and print within one material source highlights the active transmission of knowledge between textul media as well as the value placed on technical guides as sources of household information. Rebecca’s choice to record her recipes on the pages of an alchemical text shows that women were exposed to and could own ‘scientific’ and technical guides, but also indicates her interest in distillation and, more broadly, the continued presence of distillation in the household. Even by the eighteenth century, alchemy had a place in domestic knowledge.

 

 

 

Word of Mouth: Sharing and Using Recipes in Seventeenth-Century France

Dr Vallant’s Portefeuilles (Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris) are a hodgepodge of information, with recipes for gateaux, remedies in French and Latin, medical case notes, letters, religious reflections, and poems kept side-by-side. Vallant was the household physician of famed salonnière Mme de Sablé (d. 1678) and, later, Mlle de Guise.  He was also regularly consulted by Madame’s friends and family and acted as her secretary. Vallant kept track of all treatments that he tried and the remedies that proved, or might prove, useful in his practice. The notebooks, in some ways, have much in common with our modern personal recipe collections: lots of random bits, from clippings to notes. But it is the informality of the collection that makes it such a useful source of information about the process of collecting and using recipes in early modern France.

The language that Vallant used to describe the transmission of recipes is intriguing: several of his recipes suggest the ways in which knowledge was passed to him by monks and nuns, apothecaries, physicians, and laywomen. Recipes were a form of social currency and were closely tied to patronage. This isn’t always explicit in English, but emerges more clearly in the formality of French. The Duchess of Orléans, for example, seems to have been the originating point for a couple recipes. Mme de la Haye (wife of the Duchess’ apothecary) ‘gave’ a cure for the sciatica, while Mme la Ursée (the Orléans’ governess) ‘shared’ a small pox remedy. The language here suggests that these recipes were gifts of the Duchess.

The reliance on oral knowledge is also striking. Vallant regularly noted that recipes had been passed verbally to him. Various people ‘told’ him their remedies, which he then entered into his notebooks. Mme la Norrice, for example, ‘said’ that after trying many remedies for toothaches she found ease only by putting cold water in her ear. Physician Mr Belay was a particularly frequent source of oral information. He ‘told’ Vallant a remedy for the ‘colours’ [vaginal flows] in 1676 and ‘discussed’ several for blood loss in 1681.

Recipes also took winding routes before ending up in Vallant’s possession. Belay ‘told’ Vallant a remedy for the stone that had been passed to him by Mr de Fromont, secretary to the Duke of Orléans, who had it in turn passed it to him. Belay had used the recipe with great success in treating a mutual patient, Mme de Guise. Vallant also included in his collection occasional recipes from print sources, listing some from Mme Fouquet’s famous book and keeping a cut-out excerpt for Mme Ledran’s balm and unguent.

Madame de Sable (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

The Marquise de Sablé was condemned by historian André Crussaire as a hypochondriac (Un Médecin au XVIIe Siècle le Docteur Vallant: Une Malade Imaginaire, Mme de Sablé, Paris, 1910), partly because she kept a household physician and partly because so much of the notebooks and correspondence focus on health. But a close inspection reveals that much of the collection was Vallant’s attempt to keep track of his growing medical practice by writing down his successful cures. Under the heading ‘Escrouelles’ (King’s Evil, or scrofula), for example, he provided his case notes and recipe used to cure a thirty-six year old woman.

Elsewhere in the Portefeuilles, it is difficult to distinguish between what is purely Vallant’s or Mme de Sablé’s. In one section, there are several remedies for eye problems; it is perhaps no coincidence that Mme de Sablé suffered from eye trouble.  Three letters were addressed to Madame directly. All eye remedies were sent by friends: Abbé Charrier, Mme Daumon, the Marquis de la Motte, Countess d’Orche, Mr Chartier, Mme de St Ange and Mlle de Vertie. But was this primarily for her use, or for her physician?

Maybe both.

The books were kept as a practical source of working knowledge for both doctor and patron. The care taken in identifying a recipe’s sources and route of transmission was crucial in establishing two matters: reliability and reciprocity. Many recipes may have been passed on verbally rather than in writing, but this was no casual matter. As physician, Vallant needed to know if a recipe could be trusted before he tried it. As patron, Sablé needed to know the precise source of a remedy for social reasons: a recipe gained might be a favour owed… Something to keep in mind the next time you casually take a recipe from a friend and proceed to cram it into your recipe box without a second thought.

Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine

Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search