Medicine (2)


Whenever we hear the words ‘domestic’ and recipes’, we automatically associate them with women who are healers and work with herbs. However, just because the use of medicinal recipes occurred within the home, that doesn’t mean it didn’t have a close relationship with the practices of natural philosophy—or what we would call science today. By exploring what and who influenced the ingredients and methods used in Baker’s recipes, we can understand this relationship. Baker’s recipes have suggested that there is a level of sophistication to domestic medicine.

During this period, interest in the improvement of natural knowledge and medical science was growing. Notably, it was mostly men who were educated that were recognised for medicinal practice and experimentation. For instance, they were granted fellowship by the Royal Society of London, a scientific academy. Medical cookery, to which mainly women contributed to, was overshadowed by scientific work moving into male work spaces and outside the home. Along with the focus on more specific than generic remedies for disease, this contributed to the demotion of traditional knowledge. (Watts, 48) However, the early modern household was no stranger to scientific experimentation either.

Is domestic knowledge different to elite learned scientific knowledge?

There are factors which indicate or suggest Baker’s recipes are quite sophisticated and learned.

International influences

Margret Baker drew inspiration from various continents and people. There is textual evidence suggests that Baker, showing her recipes were informed and relevant. For instance, many recipes (fols.1v, 2v, 76r, 115v) describe an Italian immigrant named Matthew Lucatella, a physician who was ‘newly arrived & never sould heare before’. (V.a.619. 1v) However, his identity is still needs to be determined (https://emroc.hypotheses.org/ongoing-projects/the-baker-project ). However, this does indicate that Baker knew about practitioners who were new on the scene and the latest recipes.

Another indication that Baker’s recipes include sophisticated knowledge is her use of Latin medical books. During the early modern period, only a select few, mostly university-educated men, were able to read Latin. Yet, the recipe for ‘the confect: of coriander seede’ in fols 15v -16r mentions a person named Dorncrellius, which is a Latin name. Dorncrellius has been identified as Tobias Dornkrell ab Eberhertz (1598-1658), a German physician who wrote medical books in Latin. (https://emroc.hypotheses.org/ongoing-projects/the-baker-project ). This suggests Baker might have been able to read Latin which means she may have been educating herself. This is significant because only the educated elite could translate Latin during this period. This reflects how domestic medicine was not solely based on simplistic and natural knowledge. Baker referred to sophisticated and informed materials. Clearly, her recipes would have been relatively reliable as she referred to different practitioners across Europe. This may also imply that Baker travelled and was familiar with immigrant communities in England (https://emroc.hypotheses.org/ongoing-projects/the-baker-project ).










' The confect of coriander seede' (V.a.619 f.16r)

Moreover, other historians have found evidence of women’s connections and education using their recipe books, such as the case of Rankin with Elizabeth of Rochlitz, a German noblewoman. Around 20 percent of her recipes were signed letters sent to her by four physicians and wide variety of lay practitioners, including surgeons, barbers, apothecaries, noblewoman, and local woman, dating from the 1540s and 1550s.(Rankin,113-114) In addition to this, Elizabeth also relied on apothecaries and most their recipes were written in Latin. These recipes tended to include unusual ingredients for medicines that could not be manufactured at her estate such as mastic, theriac, laurel oil, gold and precious gems. (Rankin, 119) The transmission of knowledge in the early modern period between domestic circles and elite professional practice appears to not be uncommon. This helps us understand how there was a bigger network of communication during the emergence of interest science and natural observation.

Chemical medicine

The majority of people would think that the skill and knowledge needed for preparations for herbal preparations as medicine and chemical preparations as medicine would differ. However, historians such as Lynette Hunter argue that that was not the case. The household practice for medicine also requires a level of learned knowledge as the domestic practice draws on similar skills including weighting, distilling, grinding, heating, purifying, drying, heating and cooling. Considering they did not have access to modern technology and tools, such as a gas oven and electric mixers, they would have had an acquired level of expertise in things such as timing and techniques for accuracy to be achieved. (Hunter, 96-98) For instance, to distil something is to purify a liquid through heating until it vaporises, then cools and condense the vapour to gather the subsequent liquid. Baker’s ability to achieve this back then shows how sophisticated her recipes are.

One of the approaches to medicine and healing that someone like Baker used to achieve this is alchemy. Baker was able to apply this in the construction of her medicinal recipes.

Arguably, Baker’s domestic remedies have not been used in or for scholarly science; however, her recipes also show us how the alchemical knowledge she obtained from elsewhere. Alchemy is also another misunderstood area and is actually considered to be a basis of chemical processing methods that are still being used today. The idea of transformation and healing is closely associated with medicine as it involved changing deadly poisons and organic substances into curative medicines. This traditional medical system was utilised in Europe since the medieval ages. Baker, herself refers to it in one of her last few recipes in the book stating, ‘Alchyimy or spargy rike are accounted amongst the fore pillers of meddecen and… demonstrateth the compositions & desolutations of all boddies togather…’ (133v). Clearly, she believed it was a good foundation as a way of understanding the way in which the composition of everything, including transforming materials such as metal, was.

Alchemy apparently enables you to assume ‘another essence another colour another vertue and another nature and propertie as for example when linen ragges are turned into paper, mettall into glass skines or leather into glewe & hearbe into ashes ashes into salt into water & mercury soe moueable into sunibar & pouder’(133v). After conducting some research, I found out ‘spargy rike’ is actually a reference to spagyric which is herbal medicine produced by alchemical procedures. (Junis, 1) This branch of alchemy embraces the Paracelsian experimental science which “teaches you to separate the false from the true” (Junis, 1) and advocates treating diseases rather than preventing them and curing all with the same particular disease. (Hunter, 96) Baker is describing the three original properties of the alchemical procedures which are mercury (the water element), salt (the earth element) and sulfur (the fire element). As can be seen in the last few sentences of the insert, its purpose was to separate and join together different properties through separation, purification and recombination (Junis, 1) for medicinal purposes. This helps us understand Baker’s recipes, or at least majority of them, and why they are structured or include certain methods with natural ingredients.

Treatment for Infectious Diseases and Illnesses

Baker’s book of recipes also explores the different illnesses and epidemics around at the time and provides insight into how she and others attempted to cure and heal them. In early modern Europe, many different types of people faced various health problems. For instance, there are recipes for Ague, green sickness, and the plague is included in Baker’s book. By understanding medical history, we can comprehend and become more familiar with the early modern world generally.

What can these medicinal recipes tell us about some of the health problems Baker was treating in early modern England?

In the early modern era, there were many infectious diseases and epidemics that were widespread. There were at least seventeen outbreaks of the plague, between 1500 and 1665 after the last ‘Great Plague of London’. (Slack, 435) Baker managed to construct a few recipes as a preservative against the plague (V.a.619. fols.11v, 24r) and also for a suferaine (sovereign) water against the pestelence (V.a.619. f.64r). This shows how some of her remedies could be applied to more than one infectious disease.

However, if someone did unfortunately get infected she had a recipe for after the rising of the plague sore- 9 –days (V.a.619. f.39v).

These were fairly related to treatments for smallpox too. In Margaret Baker’s book, there are two ointments for the small pox. There was no cure and it is estimated that around 400, 000 Europeans died each year until the end of the 18th century. This included five reigning monarchs and it also responsible for 25% of general blindness. England suffered frightfully in the second half of the seventeenth century, recording widespread outbreaks in 1667 and 1668. Smallpox accounted for about for about 10-15 percent of all deaths, and 80 percent of the victims had not even reached the age of ten. (Lindemann, 73) This shows us and why the mortality rates for children were so high during this time and there would have been great concern to prevent and treat this alongside the plague. Unfortunately, variolation wasn’t fully accepted in Europe till the early eighteenth century, which was why Baker only suggested an ointment, as you will see to the right.

‘An oynitment for the Smale Poxe:’(V.a.619. f.33v)

Take two ounces of may butter; one ounce of parmacitty

One quarter of a ounce of Campher then take your may

butter & parmacitty and milt them; then leett them stand & coule

then putt in your Campher; then take a little white vine and beate them togeather then keep itt to your use.

As patients with small pox were severely scarred with sores all over the body and suffered from terrible discomfort, an ointment was a necessary remedy. As this recipe includes the use of parmacity, which is taken from a sperm whale or bottlenose whale, it would have been effective. Parmacity is a wax that chemically consists of Cetyl Palmitate, an emollient that would help lubricate the skins and Ethyl Esters which would repair the body’s tissues for blistered skin. (Neligan, 185)

Furthermore, there are three recipes for ‘Aggue’ which is malaria and any other illness involving fever and shivering. V.a.619. f.17r, 38r, 40v are some examples. As the disease was associated with swamps and marshlands, it was also referred to as marsh fever. Although malaria was a very problematic across Europe, depending on which area a person lived in a county, the mortality rate differed greatly. This was the case in Kent. People who lived in the Isle Sheppey and North Kent Marshes was suffered the fever the most in the whole of England with a life expectancy at birth at 25 years old. North Downs was the opposite as the air was pure making the life expectancy at birth from 40 to 50 years old. However, the Romney Marshes were badly contoured with death with an expectancy ranging between 25 to 30 years old. (Dobson, 224) Apparently the first effective treatment for malaria was the use of Peruvian bark or cinchona, which contains quinine – came from the New World in about 1632.’ (Lindermann, 82) However, none of Baker’s recipes include these ingredients. As bark, also known as pulvis patrum or pulvis cardinalis, was still quite new in the 1670s for domestic use, this is understandable.

Studying Baker’s recipes has been an enlightening experience and has definitely helped understand how domestic, as well as learned and alchemic, medicine in early modern era evolved and developed. Additionally, these recipes also help us understand the general health of people in Europe as well as Baker’s beliefs and interests back then. Most importantly, we can see and start to understand how and why useful and sophisticated scientific experimentations and knowledge is not confined to just the fellows of the Royal Society but merges with and influences methods in domestic medicine.


By Sarah Osho

Images

  • Plague Doctor, Aesculape, Volume 22, Figure 8, 1932: https://wellcomeimages.org/
  • Collection of medical recipes [written in the area of Worcestershire, first quarter of the 15th century]. Coloured drawings serve as extravagant decoration for the catchwords, Wellcome Library, London
  • Portrait of Paracelsus, whole-length,standing, holding sword marked A20TH. From a German or Austrian library (equivalent to Burgess, Portraits, 2218.20), Wellcome Library, London. Collection: Iconographic Collections
  • F. Peypus,Nuremberg : Practica D. Theophrasti Paracelsi, gemacht auff Europen, anzufahen in dem nechstkunfftigen dreyssigsten Jar, bisz auff das vier und dreyssigst nachvolgend. Wellcome Library, London. Woodcut and text 1529 Collection: Rare Books


Primary Sources

1. Baker, Margaret. Receipt Book of Margaret Baker, ca., MS V.a.619. Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, (1675)

2. Neligan John M., Medicines, Their Uses and Mode of Administration: Including a Complete Conspectus of the Three British Pharmacopoeias, an Account of All the New Remedies and an Appendix of Formulae, e.d David Meredith Reese, New York, Harper& Brothers, 1844

Secondary Sources

3. Evans, J., Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England, Suffolk, Boydell & Brewer Ltd (2014)

4. Leong, E. ‘Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household’, Centaurus 55, 2 (2013)

5. Lindemann, M., Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2010)

6. Slack P., Responses to Plague in Early Modern Europe: The Implications of Public Health, Social Research, The New School 55, 3 (1988)

7. Watts, R., Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History, Oxon, Routledge (2007)

8. Lynette Hunter, "Women and Domestic Medicine: Lady Experimenters, 1570-1620" in Hunter, L. and Hutton, S., Women, Science and Medicine 1500-1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society, Gloucestershire, Sutton Publishing (1997)

9. Junius, Manfred M., Spagyrics: The Alchemical Preparation of Medicinal Essences, Tinctures, and Elixirs, Vermount, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co (2007)

10. https://emroc.hypotheses.org/ongoing-projects/the-baker-project