Category Archives: Herbal Medicine

Imagery of Empire: Merchantry and Folk Medicine on the Mastic Island

By Tedi A. Pascarella

«BUONDELMONTI, Cristoforo, Liber Insularum Archipelagi [1420]» in Τόπος και Εικόνα, χαρακτικά ξένων περιηγητών για την Ελλάδα, από σπάνια βιβλία της Γενναδείου Βιβλιοθήκης, Μουσείου Μπενάκη, Ιδιωτικών Συλλογών [Space and image, engravings by foreign travellers to Greece from rare books of the Gennadius Library, the Benaki Museum and private collections], vol. I, Athens, Olkos, (Aikaterini Laskardis Foundation, 1978). http://eng.travelogues.gr/item.php?view=51701.

The island of Chios, located in the North Aegean region, is Greece’s fifth largest island, and the only place in the world that the mastic evergreen shrub, or Pistacia lentiscus, successfully produces its tears: crystalized resin that results from punctures in the bark. The island’s environmental history paints a rich tapestry that showcases Chios as mastic-centric—its tourism focusing on ecological wonders and local foodstuffs. Chios, for centuries, was a cornerstone of Ottoman, Genoese, and Chian mercantile exchange in the greater Mediterranean. The vestiges of occupation can be seen strongly even today: Christopher Columbus’s home in the medieval village of Pyrgi, minarets decorating the skyline, and images of Islamic floral motifs scattered among passersby of the bustling city center of Chios Town. From antiquity—through the Middle Ages and Renaissance (the peak of Genoese presence on the island)—and beyond, mastic (or mastiha) was a coveted commodity: gems monopolized by the sultans of the Ottoman hegemony, as well as an ingredient in folk dishes and medicines. Its properties and a pine-like taste offer today’s Instagram ‘food as medicine’ algorithm ‘back to nature’ and “antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-ulcer, anti-diabetic, cardioprotective and anti-cancer” benefits.1 From bygone uses (Hypocrites suggesting mastiha for gastrointestinal inflammation) to spotlight features on British Bake Off, it is then no surprise there exist countless articles and blog posts with cheeky titles, like “Something Herbal to Chew on” and “Can This Ancient Greek Medicine Cure Humanity?” Powerful merchant families from Genoa occupied the island beginning in the early fourteenth century, culminating in Ottoman dominion from 1566 to 1912.2 While Chios existed as a lucrative point of interest for its trading ports between East and West, mastiha was valued as highly as gold.

This 1783 romantic painting commemorates a Genoese family and its connection to the island of Chios, as well as the virtues associated by Christianity. The use of the foreign is expressed here as the ‘exotic’ through the presence of trade in the Aegean (see Figure 5, below: the female personification of the island of Chios is dressed in flowing fabrics, complete with a turban-like headdress). Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, The Glorification of the Giustiniani Family, 1783, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437814.

         The famous ruling Giustiniani family, in addition to taxes, paid Sultan Mehmet II a hefty portion of mastiha after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. From a ground-up approach—cultivation of the plant and processing of the resin done by Chians—mastiha was made widely available, making Chios extraordinarily prized. The mastichochoria, or twenty-four buttressed hamlet villages, in southern Chios categorized life by the growth and production of mastiha. George Sidiropoulos writes, the design of the enclosed, fortress-like labyrinth of the Mesta village was a direct impact of the importance of mastiha, in which the “Byzantine Empire exploited this product as a monopoly,” the Genoese Maonacompany exploited farm workers for mastic production, and lastly, the Ottomans, in turn, introduced infrastructural organization, awarding some benefits for those living and working here, like protection from pirates and mercenaries.3

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s description: “This oil sketch is a precious record of a ceiling in Genoa’s ducal palace that was destroyed in the 1860s. Tiepolo’s composition can be compared with his father’s ceiling design for Würzburg, which Domenico helped to execute (see the oil sketch for that painting nearby). The younger Tiepolo depicted a Giustiniani family patriarch, Jacopo, at the top of a staircase, kneeling before a personification of the Ligurian Republic. At left is a female personification of the Aegean island of Chios, which the Giustiniani family ruled for two centuries. At right, figures in exotic dress allude to the family’s commercial enterprises in Asia Minor.”

While it is true we know that mastiha was utilized by the ancients as remedy for upset stomachs and fresh breath, day-to-day cultural exchange resulted in traditional recipes and uses via word-of-mouth. Because of this, scholars have turned to not only official imperial records but local folk and village narratives to help adjust and add to the historical record, quite literally a ground-up approach. Folk costumes and modes of dress juxtaposed with architecture and village ethos in the artwork of award-winning photographer George Tatakis epitomizes, through visual art, mastic’s food science as well as the island’s ecological footprint, connecting cultural past, present, and future. Tatakis, capturing the mystic qualities of the island and its mastiha, writes, “legend has it that the mastic was a gift from Saint Isidore, who sought refuge near Mesta in 250 AD after being chased and injured by the Romans. Exhausted and unable to continue, he found solace under a mastic tree where it is said that the tree wept tears of the fragrant resin.”Tatakis captures the costume of Nenita, among other villages, including elaborate embroidery, linens, and headscarf, accompanied by rustic tools of the mastic warehouse, like the pans used to sort and clean the tears. While the horrors, complications, and interactions of a history of occupation is fraught in the island’s past, the opulence of lore abounds, as mastic remains a keystone ingredient of the identity recipe of Chios. 


Tedi A. Pascarella, MA History, is a world historian based in New Jersey. Her academic focuses include the early modern Mediterranean, environmental, textile histories, and their intersections. She has taught as an instructor at Monmouth University. A bibliography of her publications can be found at tediapascarella.com

  1. Vasiliki Pachi, et al. “Traditional Uses, Phtochemistry and Pharmacology of Chios Mastic Gum (Pistacia Lentiscus Var Chia, Anacardiaceae): A Review” in Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2020. ↩︎
  2. A product of the mastic tree, pitch, distilled from turpentine, also had uses as caulking for the seams in ships and the waterproofing of slate roofing and tiles. And as Kenneth M. Setton stipulates, “Asiatic drugs and spices were transshipped from Chios to the chief ports of western Europe. Loss of the island was not to improve the economy of the home government, and was to destroy the last remnants of Genoese prestige in the East. Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 1976), 324. ↩︎
  3. George Sidiropoulos, “The Development Status and Prospects of a Medieval Settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean in Journal of the Knowledge Economy (2016): 631-643. ↩︎

Sickness Personified: Clandestine Remedies from Colonial Yucatán

By R.A. Kashanipour


I curse you, little seizures! Whose erupting pox are you? Eruptions on the head and body, open eruptions, internal eruptions, fiery eruptions…” [1] So begins a highly ritualized remedy for fever, eruptions, and seizures from late colonial Yucatán. As I noted in my last post, sickness and disease were endemic throughout colonial Latin America and brought together distinct traditions of healing. As this remedy and the dozens of others from the manuscript known as Ritual of the Bacabs show, eighteenth-century Mayas of the Yucatán were not silent victims of disease. Instead, they understood sickness and infirmity as extensions of the natural and human world. They incorporated ancient traditions and firmly rooted healing in colonial context. And, as I would like to note in this post, healers personified and naturalized diseases to bolster their own therapeutic powers.

Before returning to this remedy, I want to touch on the manuscript source and then briefly make note of ancient traditions of Maya healing. Ritual of the Bacabs is a collection of healing incantations, prayers, and remedies written in Yucatec Maya sometime in the eighteenth century. This unique work, which today is held at Princeton University, addresses afflictions common to the colonial world, including pox (kak), difficulty breathing (coc), and difficulty walking (chibal oc). The devastating affects of disease are often noted as seizures (tancas). Several cures associate these outbursts with their origins, such as walking seizures (ah oc tancas), while others ascribe direct ties to the natural world as their sources, including macaw-jaguar seizures (mo balam tancas) and tarantula seizures (chiuoh tancas). The culturally bound ailment often described as madness (coil) regularly appears associated with extreme cases of the pox and seizures.

On the whole, the remedies of the text illustrate the ongoing revision of long-standing Maya traditions in the face of colonial institutions. In particular, in the pre-Hispanic period, infirmity and remediation were associated with the supernatural world and directly tied to the deities Ix Chel and Itzamná. In 1571, Diego de Landa, the second Bishop of Yucatán and infamous crusader against pagan practices, noted Ix Chel’s centrality to healing.

“The physicians and the sorcerers assembled in one of their houses with their wives… they opened bundles of their medicine, in which they kept many little things… little idols of the goddess of medicine, whom they called Ix Chel .”

Diego de Landa, ca. 1570

The two deities, the goddess of the moon and lord of the sun, were bound as husband and wife and mirroring elements of health and sickness.

Ix Chel and Itzamna This rollout image from a classic period pot depicts the goddess Ix Chel (center) caring for an ailing Itzamná (right) and a female healer (left) performing a healing ritual.  The leaves surround the infirmed and bedridden Itzamná most likely represent the purgatives used to induce the deer to vomit. A vulture appears underneath the old god’s bed, just to make clear that his condition is dire.  © Justin Kerr, K2794, www.mayavase.com
Ix Chel and Itzamna
This rollout image from a classic period pot depicts the goddess Ix Chel (center) caring for an ailing Itzamná (right) and a female healer (left) performing a healing ritual. The leaves surround the infirmed and bedridden Itzamná most likely represent the purgatives used to induce the deer to vomit. A vulture appears underneath the old god’s bed, just to make clear that his condition is dire. © Justin Kerr, K2794, www.mayavase.com

During the colonial period, local Church authorities attempted to root out any expressed association with ancient religions. In healing, however, it is clear they were unsuccessful. These deities, who were central to the creation mythology of the Classical Maya, were represented as powerful animistic forces in the healing text. In a remedy for a breathing affliction in Ritual of the Bacabs, both Itzamna and Ix Chel are invoked to harness the use of the powerful cardinal directions. The enchanter is to “for four days, shake the face of the red Ix Chel, the white Ix Chel, the yellow Ix Chel; four days he shakes the face of the red Itzamna.” [3] These supernatural forces figure prominently in the background of numerous remedies. They serve to root the cures in line with ancient traditions, which endured well into the colonial period.

File:Goddess O Ixchel.jpg
Ix Chel with her Rabbit
In this image from a Classic period earthenware polychome vase, a seated Ix Chel appears with her rabbit, which is often identified as one of her animal spirit companions. She appears as a young woman, dressed in the regalia of a noble, complete with headdress. The original object is housed at Museum of Fine Arts Boston and available digitally here.

The remedies of Ritual of the Bacabs represent a clandestine system of ritualized healing that directly built on past Maya practices, such as the invocation of Ix Chel. As a text designed for alienating and eliminating sickness, the curanderos that penned the work most likely identified themselves as a special Maya class of healers known as mak ik or benevolent shamans that controlled healing winds. In this way, they stood in line with ancient traditions, but were fully immersed in colonial experience.

[1] Ritual of the Bacabs, Princeton University Library, Garrett-Gates Collection, Mesoamerican Manuscript No. 1, folio 100.

[2] Diego de Landa and Alfred M. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación De Las Cosas De Yucatan: A Translation. (New York: Kraus, 1966), 154.

[3] Ritual of the Bacabs, folio 65.

From the Archives: Springtime in Recipe Books

As spring is on the horizon in the northern hemisphere, this post from our archives presents a wonderful reminder of the ways that seasonality figured into early modern remedies and recipes. This piece originally appeared on March 17, 2016. Just as spring was thought to be an industrious time in 18th century England, let us all hope for vernal productivity in 2022! – R.A. Kashanipour


By: Katherine Allen

Spring has sprung and I can’t help but ponder the significance of spring for recipe collectors in the late 17th and 18th century. Citations of spring in recipes highlight the importance of changing seasons and new growth, in terms of both health and productivity in the household. As Melissa Schultheis recently explored, temporality was closely connected to understanding the body. Here I consider two aspects of springtime: the prominence of spring and changes in climate for humoral-based regimens, and spring as the season for gathering (or purchasing) medical ingredients.

In recipe collections, we often find information on what time of year and for how long a person should take a remedy, and the two seasons most often cited are spring and fall. In 18th-century recipe books, remedies for the king’s evil, scurvy, rickets, dropsy, and gout were often recommended with this temporal remit. Springtime regimens were used to treat and prevent ailments arising from shifts in temperature and climate, changes in activities, and diet modifications with seasonal food availability (and potentially allergens).

Vegetable Syrup advertisement from the Whitehall Evening Post in Anna Maria Reeve’s collection (MS.2363, f. 64: Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London).
Vegetable Syrup advertisement from the Whitehall Evening Post in Anna Maria Reeve’s collection (MS.2363, f. 64. Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London).

Galenic medicine, and with it the concept of balancing the four humors, remained fundamental in medical practice into the 18th century. Spring was a warm and moist time of year, meaning that its favoured constitutions were more sanguine and less melancholic. It was a time of rejuvenation, longer daylight, and individuals were encouraged to avoid napping and to exercise in the morning. Bleeding and purging in spring were also believed to be preventative measures for avoiding ailments like fevers.

Sister Arscott’s ‘Collick Drops’ remedy was said to cure the ‘Morbus Galicus’ (syphilis), among other ailments, when taking in two ounce doses three days a week in spring and fall.[1] Sometimes recipes indicate specific months. The Trumbull family’s collection has a remedy for a rupture approved by an Aunt Barker, which included wearing a plaster and a truss while anointing it with amber oil twice a day, ‘especially [in] ye monthes of February March & April’.[2]

Even commercial medicines specified spring as an ideal time to purchase and take a remedy. For treating scurvy, the well-known patent cure ‘Vegetable Syrup’ advertisement noted that a T. Huckings felt it was necessary to take ‘a quantity every spring and autumn’. Huckings claimed that he intended to begin a course ‘on the first of March next’.[3] This testimony served as a marketing technique for promoting the remedy’s repeated use.

Spring was also an important season for making medicine. Previous posts on gathering ingredients have discussed the significance of gathering herbal ingredients in spring or early summer when they are available, and also while they are young and have stronger medicinal properties.

Pilewort. Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London.
Pilewort. Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Elizabeth Jenner’s recipe ‘to make Green oyntment’ for conditions like burns used pilewort which, ‘in A forward Spring’ you can ‘get it ye end of April wn ye Green leafe is Something like A Scurvy Grass leaf & bares A yallow flower like A Crasie’.[4] The Tyrrell family’s collection similarly has a wound drink listing 23 herbs to be ‘gathered in May to keep all the year’. The herbs were ‘not good after they are a yeare old, & after two yeares stark nought’.[5] One eye remedy even went as far as specifying that the ‘briony [bryony] must be taken up ye 10th of march’.[6]

Animals too were collected in spring. This is likely because animals were more active in spring, and juveniles (with their stronger medicinal properties) were also available. To make worm powder for treating colic and convulsions 14-15 worms were to be collected, and April and May were ‘the best time for making this’.[7] Another remedy for convulsions was a powder made of moles, ‘to be made only in March & September’.[8] Indicating that ‘a dead Mole is good for nothing, you must cut the throat alive’, suggests that this remedy was best prepared in the months when the moles were most active and also medicinally efficacious.

Mole Powder for Convulsion Fits in an anonymous collection (D-LO/6/17/112, f. 2. Image Credit: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies).
Mole Powder for Convulsion Fits in an anonymous collection (D-LO/6/17/112, f. 2. Image Credit: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies).

Spring was an industrious time in 18th century English households. It was a time to be pro-active in preventing illness through regimens of medicine, exercise and diet, particularly as the social and agricultural seasons approached. The environment’s influence on the body was a feature of 18th century healthcare, and remedies both made and purchased were tied to the centrality of self-management in changing seasons. Forward planning was also clearly necessary to source plant and animal-based ingredients and to create medicines. Recipe books hence usefully document spring as a productive time for household and health management.

[1] MS.981, f. 138. Wellcome Library, London.
[2] Add.72619, f. 114. British Library.
[3] MS.2363, f. 64. Wellcome Library, London.
[4] MS.3029, f. 50. Wellcome Library, London.
[5] MS.7822, f. 11r.-11v. Wellcome Library, London.
[6] MS.27466, f. 85. British Library.
[7] Add.72619, f. 115v. British Library.
[8] D-LO/6/17/112, f. 2. Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.


A Tale of Chiles, a Servant, and a Travelling Medical Scholar in Early Modern China

By Brian Dott

Fig. 1. A few of the many varieties of chiles available at a market in Kunming, Yunnan, China. (Image Credit: Dott, 2017)

 

Fascinated by early modern Chinese cultural history, I research popular religion, especially pilgrimage, and the culinary and medical uses of chile peppers.  Eating Sichuan food, I wondered “how did the Chinese begin to consume such a spicy, introduced plant?”  All the myriad varieties of the chile pepper originated in the Americas.  They probably reached China in the 1570s.  The earliest known Chinese source dates to 1591 (Gao Lian, Zunsheng bajian [Eight discourses on nurturing life]).  While past and present Chinese use chiles most for culinary flavoring, Chinese adoption and adaption of this American pod did not take off until the chile was classified medically and some of its empirical effects within the human body observed. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there is no clear distinction between things taken into the body as sustenance and as medicine – everything taken in affects health.  Indeed, one medical text talking about chiles informs the reader: “To make medicine, chop finely, mix with pork fat and fry to make a dish” (Xu Wenbi, Xinbian shoushi chuanzhen [New compilation of the transmitted truths on longevity], 1771).  Furthermore, the earliest text to explicitly mention using chiles to flavor food is best described as a medical text (Shiwu bencao [Pharmacopeia of edible items], 1621).

As Carla Nappi has explored in her series of posts, Translating Recipes, some recipes read as stories or conversations.  Sharing medical recipes allows modern readers to listen in on narratives from the past.  A key author for my exploration is Zhao Xuemin (1719-1805).  Zhao was a medical practitioner and author who worked to update Chinese medical knowledge by including newly introduced ingredients (such as the chile pepper) and knowledge from less well-known practitioners.  He traveled extensively to consult with local experts, and incorporated materials from their manuscripts into his own work.  Indeed, less than a hundred years after his most famous work was completed, more than half of the works he cited were no longer extant (Bencao gangmu shiyi [Correction of omissions in the Systematic pharmacopeia]).

Chiles as Treatment for Malaria

Chiles were used as both a treatment for people who had contracted malaria and as a prophylactic to prevent infection.  A local history from Guangdong stated that “All [varieties of chiles] can remove water-borne malaria and disperse rheumatism.  . . .  In Guangxi malaria is even more prevalent.  One cannot go a single day without [them]” (Enping county gazetteer, 1766).  Zhao Xuemin recounts the following story about chiles and malaria:

Because [the chile’s] property is hot [it can act as a] dispersant by entering the heart and spleen meridians.  It can also disperse water damp.  In guihai (1743), I was in Lin’an [near Hangzhou], in the 6th month a young servant drank cold water and slept on the cold, damp ground, by autumn they had developed malaria.  [They took] myriad medicines without result.  In early winter, by chance [they] ate some chile paste.  They found this very palatable, and needed it with every meal.  In addition they also used [chiles] in a medicinal broth with meals.  Before long the malaria was cured. (Zhao Xuemin, Bencao gangmu shiyi, j. 8, 73b)

Zhao gives a scene setting – place and time.  He introduces the patient, including an emphasis on class, which indirectly provides an explanation for the poor choice of sleeping place.  Zhao also provides us with his explanation for how the infection occurred – conditions involving cold and water.  The heating and damp expelling characteristics of the chile are the traits Zhao sees as important for effecting this cure.  That the servant ate chile paste by chance means that it was probably commonly used, even in a region where the elite culinary traditions rejected strong flavors.  Here, we may be seeing class differences, as the lower classes in China tended to adopt the chile long before the elites.  Chiles could be homegrown, did not have to be purchased in a market, and helped make a starch-based diet tastier. 

The fact that the servant found the chile paste to be “palatable” reflects an understanding in TCM that an individual’s body can instill a craving for things it needs.  Furthermore, while that need and craving exist, strong or even unpleasant tastes and smells become bland or “palatable.”  Zhao is refreshingly candid that older cures (presumably including some of his own) had no effect.  We can also see the importance he placed on empirical knowledge – not just relying on systems and traditional classifications.  It appears that once he noticed an improvement in the patient’s condition, after the chance introduction of chile paste into their diet, Zhao introduced another form of chiles—medicinal broth – into the treatment regimen.  To modern readers, Zhao is frustratingly vague about the recipes for these treatments.  At one level, such details were probably not necessary for his intended audience – exact ingredients in the paste probably did not matter, as long as chiles were present, and everyone knew how to brew a medicinal broth.  More importantly, the anecdotal aspect of the description created an informal tone that may have made this treatment more believable to past readers than any mere list of ingredients.

 

For further reading (and recipes), see  Brian Dott, The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography, Columbia University Press, 2020.