Category Archives: Medicine

Gathering Ingredients For Early Modern Recipes/Herbal Remedies

By Jennifer Munroe

An entry from Mary Doggett’s receipt book from 1682 in The British Library for a “Water called Rosa Solis” includes a curious set of instructions, curious not so much for the way it explains how to make said water, but rather for the lengthy details about how to gather its ingredients:

“How to make ye Water called Rosa Solis to be gathered in the Month of June or July”:
Take this herb called Rosa Solis it growes in Meadows or Marshy Grounds and in no other places, it is of an herb color and grows very Low and flat to ye ground wth a long stalk in the midst wth six branches, springing out of ye root round about ye stalk, and wth a leaf herb color, and of main bredth and length; and when you gather it take heed in any case you touch no where but ye stalk when you put it up for ye vertue lys in ye leaf, and if you touch it it’s gon; lay it in a very clean basket for ye leaves of this herb is of great strength, vertue and nature…(BL Add 27466 f.2r)

While we might assume that early modern Englishwomen collected their ingredients from their own gardens or from neighboring natural areas, receipt books from the period do not typically say as much. In fact, it would have been entirely possible for women to purchase the ingredients for their receipts. This receipt makes it clear, though, that Doggett’s reader is expected to get them herself.

But what does this receipt tell us about the plant and the woman (or person) collecting it? I find it interesting, first and foremost, that while many receipts in Doggett’s book (and so many others) seem to take for granted that the reader will already know how to acquire and use (and will probably have on hand) key ingredients, this receipt does not. Instead, the reader learns not only where to find it, but also how to identify it once she traipses through the meadow or marsh where it grows. So, either this plant isn’t as common as it might seem, as it appears in countless receipt books in the period without such instruction, or Doggett provides these directions because she assumes that her reader has simply never gathered rosa solis before. After all, the warning about how to handle the plant bespeaks an attention to (critical) detail that one would presumably not require if one had actually picked and used the plant before. Otherwise, would one not already know to “take heed in any case you touch no where but ye stalk when you put it up for ye vertue lys in ye leaf, and if you touch it it’s gon”? Reiterating the restorative powers of the leaf, not the stalk, Doggett’s receipt insists at the end that the reader must lay the leaf ever so carefully in the basket after picking as well, as the “leaves of this herb is of great strength.”

Perhaps this receipt indicates more, though, than something about its user. It may tell us as well about Doggett, about her aspirations as a manuscript compiler of receipts. Doggett’s book is arguably itself an exercise in underscoring the authority and expertise of its author. The book is presented in beautifully rendered italic hand, elaborate in such a way as to mimic the care taken in preparing an illuminated manuscript. It is neatly ordered: first waters, then salves and ointments, followed by plasters, balsams, and then medicines for different parts of the body. What this book tells us is that Doggett was concerned with how it represented her as its knowledegable source. And so, when we read not to touch anywhere but the stalk, we are reminded of the care one should take while gathering, but we are also reminded that Doggett has likely tried this receipt herself, that she too has crossed the meadow or traversed the marsh in search of the rosa solis; and we should be grateful that she has spared us wasting our precious ingredient by not knowing that the virtue lies in the leaf, that she has done the experimenting for us.

Green sickness, red plants

By Helen King

I’ve been interested for a long time in green sickness, a condition affecting girls at puberty that involved menstrual suppression, often along with some sort of dietary ‘blockage’. The remedies for it, over the 400 or so years that it was recognised as a disease, raise all sorts of problems. For example, in the 19th century it was seen as a form of anaemia, so iron was prescribed. In the 17th century, before that level of knowledge of blood existed, ‘steel filings’ were often part of the remedy, and iron is a constituent of steel. So, how did they know to use steel? Or was this nothing to do with the iron content, but instead about steel being imagined as ‘cutting through’ the blockages?

Langham’s text. From http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/healthyreading.html . Copyright: Cardiff University, used with permission.

William Langham wrote ‘The Garden of Health’ in 1597. It was based on earlier recipe collections, and I came upon it when I was thinking about using recipes to tease out what exactly was supposed to be causing the symptoms – so, if the recipe involved plants that were clearly evacuative, then this could suggest that the cause of the disease was seen as a blockage. Langham arranged plants in simple alphabetical order, rather than arranging the material under the names of diseases; but, as part of his accessibility, he also gave a list of conditions with references to the different plant entries where the reader could find out more.

Langham gives a range of recipes for green sickness. One is packed full of ‘red’ plants –

‘seethe powder of the Keyes [i.e. the ash tree] with Betonie, red Sage, red Mynts, and Magerom [marjoram] in running water from a pottell [= 2 quarts] to a quart, and drink thereof a good draught with sugar warme morning and evening’

Elaine Hobby pointed out to me that this recipe also appears in 1677 in ‘The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight’ by ‘T.P.’ (possibly Hannah Woolley), but with ‘red Fennel’ instead of ‘red Mynts’. There was a second edition of Langham in 1633, and maybe the author used this.
So what’s all this red about? Betony, sage and marjoram often appear together in later collections as a gentle sternutatory. Red sage and betony are used against bilious attacks. Ash keys feature today on ‘wild food’ sites with the warning that they are very bitter and need to be boiled several times before eating, but what was used here was the ripe seed, dried and then reduced to powder. The ash-powder is used elsewhere for the stone (by provoking urination), jaundice and dropsy.

So maybe there’s something here about getting rid of obstructions. But to me, all this redness suggests the colour of blood, and the use of running water also makes me think that this is aimed at restoring or establishing a normal menstrual flow. How do we balance the known effects of the plants chosen, with the symbolic power of red? Comments please!

Helen King is Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University, UK. Her book on green sickness is  The Disease of Virgins.

Magic or Medicine? Healing Charms in Fifteenth-Century English Recipe Collections

By Laura Mitchell

Charms can be found in all manner of medieval manuscripts, scrawled in the margins or added (seemingly at random) on blank pages and in the flyleaves. Usually they were simply stuck in some place convenient by someone who thought they would be useful or interesting to have on hand. However, charms also appear in medieval recipe collections, mixed in with recipes for nosebleeds or toothaches or different coloured inks. In these contexts, where does one separate the charm from the recipe?  Should they even be separated?

Let’s back up a minute and think about exactly what I mean by a charm in fifteenth-century England. In medieval Europe, the forms of charms and recipes are generally the same. Both are formulas, whether spoken, written, or chanted. Both have an oral and a written component. And both used words and phrases from the Bible, liturgy, and other religious texts familiar to the average medieval person.[1] For example, the Flum Jordan charm to staunch blood is based on the Biblical story of Jesus’s baptism in the river Jordan. Just as the river stopped flowing when Jesus entered the water, so the blood will stop flowing once the charm is recited. Additionally, prayers could take on apotropaic properties – the recitation of Paternosters and Ave Marias for protection or healing was encouraged in orthodox worship and these two prayers frequently appear in charm texts.

For the ordinary lay person there could be much confusion concerning what was a charm (and therefore bad) and what was a prayer (and therefore good). The cause of this confusion can be explained by looking at the proliferation of sacramentals, which were an important part of popular belief in late medieval Christianity. Sacramentals were objects: things like candles, salt, and water, that had been blessed by the parish priest and distributed to all the households. The candles were lit during thunderstorms to drive away the demons thought to be active during storms, while the water was sprinkled on the hearth to drive away evil or sprinkled in the fields to promote fertility. Water and salt could be given to sick animals.

It’s easy to see how this Church-sanctioned practice could lead to similar practices with objects that had not been blessed, but which were thought to have special God-given properties. It was difficult for the average person to distinguish between the two types of objects, since both could be used and manipulated. Users of charms and folk magic were not concerned with the finer points of theology but with the fact that both sacramental and charms had a power that presumably came from God. There was a very fine line indeed between magic and orthodox religion. Magic in the fifteenth century was firmly established within a Christian framework and fit into people’s belief systems in a natural, rational manner.[2]

Countries and regions might favour one type or one motif over another, though. Wind, for example, was more common in Russia, with charms of ill-purpose said to be “sent on the wind”.[3] Romanian charms, at least in modern times, involve the use of both gestures and formulas. The evil eye, while fairly common in countries like Hungary, is unknown in the medieval English corpus of surviving charms. The one commonality across medieval cultures and countries is the dominance of healing charms, which survive far more than any other charm type.

Unsurprisingly, medical charms are often found in collections of medical recipes. Health and wellbeing was a serious concern in the Middle Ages and, if a cure was questionably orthodox, well, that was alright as long as it worked. In these collections, we find charms for bleeding, toothaches, fevers, blurred vision, insomnia, wounds, childbirth, worms in the ear, and falling sickness (epilepsy)–but not for such things as back pain or swollen feet. Scholars don’t really know why medical charms are restricted to a small number of ailments, but some scholars like Lea Olsan believe it’s because there are no Biblical stories nor religious imagery that can be associated with other ailments.

Charms appear in all diverse medical recipe collections, from the household collection of the Haldenby family in Cambridge (Trinity College MS O.1.57) to the collection of the physician Thomas Fayreford (British Library, Harley MS 2558). This suggests that they were regarded with little or no distinction from the non-magical recipes with which they are grouped. Charms and recipes are presented as equally valid and proper texts to read and/or use, but what distinguished them was merely the source of their curative powers. Medical recipes broadly relied on natural means and associations, whereas charms derived their power from the divine, the supernatural. But even that distinction can be too simplistic! For now, I hope it is clear that the distinction between magic and medicine was more blurred than we often think. Most medieval people considered charms to be no more harmful or unorthodox than any other recipe they might encounter in their daily lives.


[1] Lea Olsan, “Charms in Medieval Memory,” in Charms and Charming in Europe, ed. Jonathan Roper (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 60.

[2] On the rationality of medieval magic see Richard Kieckhefer, “The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic” American Historical Review 99:3 (1994): 813-836.

[3] W.F. Ryan, “Eclecticism in the Russian Charm Tradition,” in Charms and Charming in Europe, 117.