Medical recipes in early modern Britain survey a multitude of medical procedures, many of which that required homemade remedies. In a recipe book titled “A Booke of Such Medicines as Have Been Approved by the Speciall Practize of Mrs. Corlyon”, the first two pages of the index are organized by the different parts of the body: eyes, head, face, teeth, throat, breast, lungs, spleen, stomach, and so on.[1] The index then transitions to different diseases and sicknesses that include the plague, gout, the sweats, and worms.[2] The third category of Mrs. Corlyon’s recipes are different waters, salves, ointments, and even surgery.[3] Each subheading has an extensive list of recipes underneath; some subheadings having significantly more recipes than others. Medicinal recipe books were incredibly multifarious, but what is most interesting to note is the fact that most, if not all, recipes can be made at home with common ingredients (with the exception of rarer ingredients reserved for upper class families). The home became a place of experimentation and knowledge production as women documented recipes that they deemed as successful treatments. Medicinal recipe books symbolize the crucial role women had in developing early modern British medicine through their intellectual contributions. Women were able to create a network of medicinal knowledge through home experiments and consulting other medical texts and recipes; a network that allowed women to create, share, and disseminate knowledge that would be necessary for early modern healthcare professions.
Early modern women became associated with healthcare due to their association with the domestic sphere. Since women were responsible for taking care of the members of the household, medicine was no exception.[4] Women were then expected to develop “necessary” knowledge in order to “manage illness and administer remedies within a domestic setting”.[5] This meant that wives, mothers, daughters, domestic servants, and enslaved people had a mastery of medical knowledge.[6] During a time as medically tumultuous as the Black Death, women were expected to fulfill their naturally nurturing roles; preparing food and providing care for the body were essentially a “female task”.[7] Gender expectations became woven into medical care for several reasons. Women were responsible for preparing meals, prepared medicines, and did laundry for the ill. As a result, men were strongly disassociated with the medical field because they simply did not partake in these domestic duties. In fact, medical care was strongly associated with women to extent that male physicians relied on philosophical justifications of their practice in order to “avoid appearing feminine.”[8] Women were thus essential to healthcare in the early modern period due to close associations with the domestic sphere.[9]
The domestic sphere gave women a physical space that allowed them to generate a new information network that comprised of medical skills and study methods. This network centralized medicinal recipes: they were the “most widespread form of medical writing in early modern Europe and the only textual genre in which women can be found readily as medical authors and authorities.”[10] Women could borrow recipes from acquaintances, family, and even from published works. At home in the kitchen, women could then recreate or experiment with these recipes and depending on the results, would document her own experience. Recreating recipes is synonymous with knowledge creation because recipes were impossible to reproduce identically. Women could then engage in this network of medical knowledge through different methods: creating new knowledge through experiments, consulting healthcare manuals, and using personal study techniques.[11] To illustrate these different approaches, I have selected three different recipe books from 1625, 1639, and 1660 that feature a recipe for wound care.
The 1625 and 1660 recipes on wound care illustrate how women experimented with medical knowledge based on the language present in the recipes. The deliberate word choice in some recipes reflect not only the compiler’s approval for its efficacy, but also serves as a kind of testimony that the compiler most likely experimented in order to reach that conclusion.[12] There are several “types” of language that appears in recipe books that signal experience. Other notes in the margin that explain changes made to the recipe, commentary on how to find the best ingredients for the recipe, or language that reflects personal evaluation.[13] Some recipes simply use the word “approved”.[14] Both the 1625 and 1660 recipes incorporate language that match the personal evaluation category by including quantified directions like the number of days or the number of times within a specific range. Documenting a range and using the word “or” or “within” reflects the medicinal recipe compiler’s conclusions after conducting different experiments; they have worked with the recipe enough to decide that the recipe will still succeed within a specific range.
Though these recipes do not explicitly document the experimentation process, the language of the recipes include conclusive statements that imply a certain degree of testing. For example, in the 1625 medicinal recipe book titled “Medical recipes”, the instructions for wound care state that this drink makes wounds heal within thirteen days.[15] Using a specific number implies that the recipe has been tested enough to determine the range of days to be thirteen. Using the word “within” implies that in some experiments, or remakes, of the recipe has shown results to occur before the thirteen-day mark. The recipe also concludes with “this is a very healthfull medicine as yt hath beene proved”, demonstrating that experimentation was conducted in order to attest to the recipe’s efficacy. In the 1639 recipe book titled “A boocke of very good medicines for seueral deseases, wounds, and sores both new and olde”, Katherine Packer documents that the wound will “gash out againe” and thus requires blowing on the wound two to three times[16], which implies that Packer has worked with this recipe enough to know what will occur after applying the eggshell.
Both the 1625 and 1639 wound care recipes are likely examples of women creating new medical knowledge and contributing to the intellectual development of early modern British healthcare. Since the two recipes on wound care do not attribute another person’s name or at relation to the compiler, this suggests that these recipes may be original. Early modern recipe books were usually a collaborative process that involved multiple members of a household.[17] A wife could compile recipes and her husband would make notes; a wife could collect recipes from her brothers or brother-in-law; a group of friends could contribute to a singular recipe book; a mother could pass on her recipe book for future generations to make additions. Recipe compilers would often give credit to the original recipe owner, whether by having the individual write in the book or by attaching their name to the title of the recipe.[18] Additionally, each of the medicinal recipe books from 1625, 1639, and 1660 feature the same handwriting for each respective book. Collaborative recipe books feature an array of different handwriting styles of each contributor. Thus, original wound care treatments, as seen in the 1625 and 1639 recipes, illustrate women’s contribution to the growth of healthcare knowledge by conducting original experiments presumably at home.
Next to creating medical knowledge from scratch was developing academic skills such as consulting other sources and creating study methods to process information. Popular medical sources women could consult were printed herbals and recipe collections. The 1625 and 1660 recipes for wound care incorporate significantly more herbs compared to Katherine Packer’s recipe that only required eggshells and “aquile”, a columbine plant.[19] For instance, the two recipes feature an array of ingredients: “fennycricke”, “Tansey straw”, “berrye lea[v]es”, “Snelberrye lea[v]es”, turpentine, rose water, saffron, and even “red Mercurye precipitate”.[20][21] Upper-class women were more likely to afford and access such a variety of herbs. This, however, does not discount the widespread medical knowledge of women from other ranks. There was a “widespread diffusion of medical literacy among the lay populace”; women had intimate knowledge of bodies and had the vocabulary to describe different physical conditions.[22] Nonetheless, upper-class women in particular consulted these manuals to suit their own needs and studied the new information by using personal reading strategies, note-taking, and compilation practices.[23] Women “read and re-read texts, studied entries one . . . and conferred with other trusted knowers.”[24] The approach to medical knowledge was quite an academic one.
Above: "Wolfgang Helmhard Hohberg, Georgica curiosa aucta (Nuremberg: 1697).Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons"Below: "A woman in bed recovering from childbirth, a midwife washes the baby while another attendant looks after the mother. Woodcut. (Wellcome Images/ CC BY 4.0 )"
Each woman had her own approach to medicine, whether if it was through experimentation, consulting manuals, or a combination of both. Medicinal recipe books demonstrate how women had full control over their healthcare study methods. They deemed what recipes were useful to specific health issues, no two treatments were identical. The three different wound care recipes have significantly different approaches to healing wounds. The 1625 recipe requires an herb-laiden “drink” that requires the patient to consume and “anoynte” on the wound.[25] The 1639 recipe is perhaps the most simple, only requiring egg shells and a columbine plant to be placed directly on the wound. The 1660 recipe features a homemade spread that is supposed to go on a soaked “plaister” before placing it on the wound.[26] The recipe even calls for dressing the wound[27], a step neither the 1625 nor 1639 recipes include. Thus, these recipes illustrate how women understood a universal practice such as wound care in contrasting manners. Each compiler documented recipes that they respectively deemed as effective healthcare, contributing to the growth of early modern British healthcare as one of diverse approaches.
"Saint Elizabeth offers a bowl of food and a tankard of drink to a male patient in the hospital in Marburg, Germany. Oil 1598 by Adam Elsheimer. Wellcome Images L0015276"
Women were engaging in a network of medicinal information in order to gain knowledge and skills in order to serve their community through healthcare “professions”. “Usage of medical texts was geared toward practice, rather than toward leisure.”[28] Early modern Britain had large numbers of public female healers, even in major locations such as London.[29] Women were accepted by the public as they worked in hospitals, parishes, and in private homes.[30] Other types of female medical professions include: nurses, live-in hospital administrators, pharmacists, midwives, and wet nurses.[31] Women could continue to engage with the community through different medical fields. One field that includes professions such as carrying out minor surgeries, treating neighbors, and midwifery required more practical skills such as wound care and extensive knowledge on medical conditions or diseases. The other field resembles more on the business-side of healthcare, requiring skills that are still medically-inclined but are different from practical application. Professions that fall under this category include running health-related establishments and publishing medicinal recipe books.[32] Women were extensively involved in public healthcare and were universally accepted. As a result, outrage expressed by male physicians were an anomaly and were entirely situational; most Britons would not have endorsed these comments.[33]
As women developed their own medical knowledge and consulted other sources to increase their understanding, healthcare became a female-dominated field as an unofficial profession. “Throughout early modern Europe, women’s ‘unofficial’ medical skills were put to a number of innovative ‘official’ uses.”[34] Women in healthcare were not given occupational titles because they were not accepted by guilds and did not receive proper university education.[35] Additionally, women’s contribution to public medical work were largely undocumented in administrative records in early modern Britain.[36] Women were not given proper and official recognition for their contributions to healthcare as a profession because it was naturally expected. Taking care of a household translated into taking care of the community; women could extend nurturing and empathetic qualities that were “required” of taking care of others.
Though women were not given proper and official recognition for the many different medical roles women fulfilled, medicinal recipe books serve as physical reminders for the intellectual contributions that were necessary in developing healthcare for the community. In the household, women could experiment with different medicinal recipes and then document their successes by stating that the recipe bas been “proved” (seen in the 1625 recipe), adding notes of caution (seen in the 1639 recipe), or putting their name for approval (seen in the 1660 recipe). If women were not creating original medical knowledge, then they consulted other medical manuals and extensively taking notes in order to incorporate the new information into their own practice. The extensive knowledge women possessed regarding care, healing, and health promotion allowed women to dominate healthcare and work in public spaces such as hospitals, parishes, and the homes of other community members. Since health and healing became integrated in societal expectations for women, practicing medicine was a substantially more accepted occupation. Women, rather than men, became the more qualified medical authorities in early modern England.
Leong, Elaine. 2013. “Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household.” Centaurus 55 (2): 81–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12019.
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