Explore how everyday people living in eighteenth-century England dealt with sickness, accidents, and disease in this unpublished kitchen book from 1737. Bridget Lane, a typical British housewife and lady of the house, treated her family for the physical ills that befell them. She gathered more than 150 cures and remedies, compiling them along with her unique insights into healing principles and practices of the time. Edited with detailed commentary by Vincent DiMarco, a longtime scholar of medieval literature, this text examines how Bridget Lane's cures relate to folk- and herbal medicine traditions, whether recipes preserved vestiges of magic and spiritual healing, details on ingredients and their effects, and ways certain recipes have been adapted to the modern kitchen. Based on a comprehensive analysis of how the people of the eighteenth-century understood ailments, Mrs. Lane's guide and the attendant commentary is intended for students, lovers of history, and anyone interested in the social sciences. Join an eighteenth-century housewife and discover all she did in the kitchen to protect and help her family with It Has Helped to Admiration.
It Has Helped to Admiration
Eighteenth-Century Medical Cures from the Kitchen Book of Bridget Lane, 1737By Vincent DiMarcoiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Vincent DiMarco
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-5626-1Contents
Acknowledgments....................................................................xiiiList of Illustrations..............................................................xvPreface............................................................................xviiIntroduction.......................................................................xxiTable of Contents: Medical, Veterinary, and Household Receipts.....................xliMedical Receipts...................................................................1Text and Commentary, 1.1-1.148.....................................................1Veterinary Receipts................................................................209Text and Commentary, 2.1-2.5.......................................................209Household Receipts.................................................................211Text and Commentary, 3.1-3.4.......................................................211Table of Contents: Culinary Receipts...............................................217Culinary Receipts..................................................................221Appendix A: Textual Notes and Emendations..........................................281Appendix B: Weights and Measures with Metric Conversions...........................285Appendix C: Bridget Lane's Inventory of Household Linens, etc......................289Appendix D: Culinary Receipts Omitted from This Edition............................291Bibliography.......................................................................295Index..............................................................................329
Chapter One
1.1 For a Sore Throat. It Was Told Me As Infalible
Rub some in a bason. Pour some of the best crab vinegar on them. Receive the steam through the pip of a tundish. Make use of it several times in the day.
A black ribon dip'd in spirit of hartshorn, rub about the neck. As it drys, wet it again.
A strong decoction of garden carrots to gargel a throat that is sore. I know a person always finds relief by making use of it.
A sore throat can be caused by many factors, e.g., viruses, bacteria such as Streptococcus, sinus drainage, breathing through the mouth, and the yeast fungus Candida albicans. The latter is a normal constituent of the human flora which can lead to thrush (a contagious disease, occurring most frequently in infants and children, characterized by small whitish eruptions on the throat, mouth, and tongue). It is not surprising, of course, that household books like this one contain numerous remedies for a common ailment like a sore throat—see also 1.3 and 1.75—and likewise that Bridget Lane here offers a number of therapies under one heading (although this is not her regular practice).
Hops(Humulus iupulus), native to the temperate northern hemisphere and cultivated in Europe from the eighteenth century (seventeenth century in North America), are high in methylbutenol, which has a mild sedative effect on the central nervous system. This was apparently recognized in traditional and folk medicine, which often called for hop tea for insomnia and a pillow of hops for comfort and easing of stress. George III reputedly used such a pillow to relieve symptoms of porphyria (www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/pereira/humulus.html) and the Delaware Indians heated a small bag of hop leaves to relieve earache and toothache (www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/ humulus_lupulus.html). Hops also appear to possess antibacterial qualities, and an infusion of hops in alcohol is today used by some as a topical treatment for bedsores and other ailments. A southern American folk cure from the eighteenth century (Moss 1999, 67), To Cure a Sore Throat tho a Quindsey (i.e., a quinsy, for which see 1.3), makes the hops do double duty, in both steam and a poultice:
Take a handful of hops, steep it in spirits, and apply a common funnel to the liquid. Let the patient apply the funnel to his throat and thereby absorb the steam. Let the hops be applied like a poultice.
Crab vinegar is made from crab apples (the fruit of any of several deciduous trees of the genus Malus).
A tundish is a vessel with a tube at the bottom—here, corresponding to the pip (obsolete variant of pipe) that fit into the bung hole of a tun or cask and formed a kind of funnel.
For whatever reason, a black ribon (i.e., ribbon) was a popular treatment for sore throat, often employed as a prophylactic against the ailment. Hultin 1975, 354, cites the diary of pastor James Woodforde of Norfolk (6 May 1790), in which he records the purchase of eighteen yards (!) of black ribbon, "designed to put round our Necks to prevent sore throats." Janos 1990, 31, quotes a recollection of black silk ribbons on the neck "for croup" in twentieth-century Massachusetts.
Spirit of hartshorn is an aqueous solution of ammonia, manufactured from the horns and hooves of red deer. Colorless and pungent, it consisted of about 28 percent ammonia gas.
A decoction is an extract or concentration of something produced by boiling (from Latin decoctus, past participle of decoquere, 'to boil down to the dregs' [de- (intensive) + coquere, 'to cook']).
Carrots (Daucas carota) were likewise employed in eighteenthcentury America in a gargle for sore throat (Moss 1999, 67):
Scrape or grate the outside of carrots in a mug, & pour on the Gratings boiling water. Cover it Close and let it stand until cold, [gargle] well and often.
1.2 Where the Severall Sorts of Herbs Grow of Which the Plague Water Is Made of Potherbs
In the court orchard agrimony and burnet, on the 2 sides of the banke. In the park that belongs to Thomas Cornwall, Esquire, are scabious and mugwort; videlicet, round the nursery house, betony on the left hand [of] the house from Tenbury, that is to say the nursery; centery, wilde thyme, bugbean and tormintle by the way side as you go to the same house. Under the out side [of] the parsonage hedge belonging to Edmund Edwards grows avens. In the way to Mr Saberys at the colledge is verven and also about those meadows ajoyning in Mr Mansfield fold of Burford, white archangle. On Feambridge and under the chancell wall grows pellitory of the wall and mercury—the mercury is on the west end of the church in Timberlegs of the swan; close adjoyning to the south end of his house there is also verven under Timberlegs garden pales. Next [to] the road is stinkeing hoar hound and about the same is mullet. At Haylys of Burford in the cr[o]ft beyond the house end grow elecompane and allso in many other places about Care Bridge, and [in] most of the dunghills in town grows stinkeing orage.
Plague (from Old French plage, 'a stroke or wound' and Latin plaga, 'stroke', but compare the Late Latin use of the word for 'pestilence') is the name of the bacterial disease considered by most researchers to be caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, recently reclassified as a member of the Enterobacteriaceae family. Plague is an infection of the lymphatic system, usually caused by the...
