DOMESTIC MEDICINE
Friends, neighbours, church ministers and philanthropic members of the landed gentry shared medical recipes and ingredients with people in their communities. Medical traditions were passed down from mother to daughter through the generations.
For the wealthy, the domestic concoction of medicines could involve long preparation periods and complex distillation methods. For the less well-off medical simples were the most common form of treatment. Simples were items which were usually common to the household or easily acquired locally, and which were taken pure, without mixing them with anything else.
A household recipe book, compiled by generations of women for use in the home, would contain recipes for custard and tarts alongside treatments for syphilis and gout. Recipes for cleaning products and cosmetics would be mixed in with those for laxatives and ointments. Recipe books were used to treat family, especially children, as well as friends and neighbours. They existed as family heirlooms that passed medical knowledge, usually from mother to daughter, for the treatment of the household. Recipe books were usually owned by middling or upper-class women because they would have had to be completely literate – able to both read and write – as well as have access to blank notebooks on which to write.
The sick poor would often try a range of treatments at home and only when these were unsuccessful would they visit a dispensary or infirmary for further treatment.
These home remedies include having been bled, blistered and given vomits and laxatives. While the descriptions given are often quite vague (‘some med[icine] tried’, ‘had a vomit’), in other cases more detail is given. These include the use of Penny Royal, a herbal stimulant, to induce menstruation and both Senna, another herbal derivative, and Glauber’s Salt, a mineral compound, as laxatives.
The medicines described often took the form of medical simples, involving only a single component of a product that could be either common to the household or easily acquired. These include oil and honey, both taken as treatments for coughs, spirit of wine, applied externally for a leg complaint, and turpentine, applied to the skin as a treatment for back pain. Home-made turnip syrup also features as a cough treatment. Other domestic remedies detailed include washing sore eyes with milk and cutting off hair as a cure for a headache. In another case, a mother is recorded as having placed her infant’s feet in warm water to treat its convulsions.
The records of the Edinburgh dispensary also show some of the support provided to the sick poor before they entered the dispensary. This included the treatment provided by a ‘benev[olent] lady, the widow of a Clergyman’ [DEP/DUA/1/21/28]. The woman, although unnamed, is described as a ‘celeb[rated] pract[itioner] at this place’. Her particular skill was in the field of epilepsy.
In other cases the advice or support of friends and family is recorded, including in one case where an individual applied burnt butter to their child’s head, as a treatment for a fungal infection, ‘by the advice of some officious neighbours’ [DEP/DUA/1/33/33].
For the wealthy, the domestic concoction of medicines could involve long preparation periods and complex distillation methods. For the less well-off medical simples were the most common form of treatment. Simples were items which were usually common to the household or easily acquired locally, and which were taken pure, without mixing them with anything else.
Recipe books
A household recipe book, compiled by generations of women for use in the home, would contain recipes for custard and tarts alongside treatments for syphilis and gout. Recipes for cleaning products and cosmetics would be mixed in with those for laxatives and ointments. Recipe books were used to treat family, especially children, as well as friends and neighbours. They existed as family heirlooms that passed medical knowledge, usually from mother to daughter, for the treatment of the household. Recipe books were usually owned by middling or upper-class women because they would have had to be completely literate – able to both read and write – as well as have access to blank notebooks on which to write.
Dispensary patients
The sick poor would often try a range of treatments at home and only when these were unsuccessful would they visit a dispensary or infirmary for further treatment.
These home remedies include having been bled, blistered and given vomits and laxatives. While the descriptions given are often quite vague (‘some med[icine] tried’, ‘had a vomit’), in other cases more detail is given. These include the use of Penny Royal, a herbal stimulant, to induce menstruation and both Senna, another herbal derivative, and Glauber’s Salt, a mineral compound, as laxatives.
The medicines described often took the form of medical simples, involving only a single component of a product that could be either common to the household or easily acquired. These include oil and honey, both taken as treatments for coughs, spirit of wine, applied externally for a leg complaint, and turpentine, applied to the skin as a treatment for back pain. Home-made turnip syrup also features as a cough treatment. Other domestic remedies detailed include washing sore eyes with milk and cutting off hair as a cure for a headache. In another case, a mother is recorded as having placed her infant’s feet in warm water to treat its convulsions.
Philanthropy
The records of the Edinburgh dispensary also show some of the support provided to the sick poor before they entered the dispensary. This included the treatment provided by a ‘benev[olent] lady, the widow of a Clergyman’ [DEP/DUA/1/21/28]. The woman, although unnamed, is described as a ‘celeb[rated] pract[itioner] at this place’. Her particular skill was in the field of epilepsy.
In other cases the advice or support of friends and family is recorded, including in one case where an individual applied burnt butter to their child’s head, as a treatment for a fungal infection, ‘by the advice of some officious neighbours’ [DEP/DUA/1/33/33].
