by Richard Sugg
106 Choice Manual, 149–52, 183.
107 Choice Manual, 3. ‘Endive’ is another name for chicory leaves.
108 See Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London: Routledge, 1995), 60–61.
109 The deaths in infancy of her brothers, and her father’s quarrel with his brother, who was heir to his titles, made Elizabeth and her two sisters great heiresses’. Considine adds that, though her father died in 1616, Elizabeth’s inheritance was delayed for twenty years by family wrangling.
110 On Freke, see Elaine Leong, Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82.1 (2008): 145–68. Among Freke’s reading notes were selections from John Gerard, Culpeper’s 1649 Pharmacopeia, and the French physician Moise Charas, who listed a powder containing human skull against fever, poisoning and smallpox (‘Making Medicines’, 151; Charas, The Royal Pharmacopeia (1678), 122). At the risk of distorting early modern respect for class hierarchy, one could argue that awareness of figures such as Freke might be tied to other research which has helped correct the heavily male-dominated world of printed medicine. Back in the Elizabethan period, we have Harkness’s valuable study of popular London healers such as ‘ "the old woman at Newington … unto whom the people do resort, as unto an oracle", "the woman on the Bankside … " and "the cunning woman in Sea Coal Lane"’ (Jewel House, 71). Cf. also Deborah E. Harkness, A View from the Streets: Women and Medical Work in Elizabethan London’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82.1 (2008): 53–85. For more on the role of women publishers in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London, see Furdell, Publishing and Medicine, 91–112.
111 ‘Making Medicines’, 147.
112 ‘Grace Mildmay’, new DNB.
113 Northampton County Record Office, Westmorland, 66. Dating is from personal communication, 9 June 2010: ‘Most of the recipe books span a long time period. Most of the ones cited in the database were created during the "long 17th century." Grace Mildmay’s is the earliest – most likely she started it late 16th century and many of the other mss dip into the early 18 century’.
114 See: Freke (BL additional ms 45718), 228r, 226v; Chesterfield (wellcome western 751), b2r, b3v, b4r, b32v; Monmouth House (Bod MS don.3.11), 14r; fol-chest (Folger v.b. 286), 14, 89–90; hoghton (Folger v.a. 365), 15v, 21r; Hughes (wellcome western ms 363), 191v, 220v; Fairfax (arcana fairfaxiana), 54; greenway (NLM ms b 261), 21; danby (HM 60413), 18r; evelyn (BL Additional MS 78337), 60v; read (alphabetical book of physical secrets), 41, 68, 131, 218–20; queen (queen’s closet opened), 95–96; Bertie (Elizabeth Bertie – Bod Ms Eng Misc D), 21–24, 113. A Fairfax cure for wounds made from skull-moss, human blood and earthworms is later cited in The Leeds Mercury, Saturday, 19 November 1892.
115 Chesterfield, e2r, fol-chest, 45.
116 Chesterfield, e1r; Monmouth House, 31r; fol-chest, 7; queen, 130; Monmouth House, 40v; read, 31; kent, 68; ladies, 180; ladies, 163–64; Fairfax, 41; greenway, 75; fol-chest, 106; greenway, 113; tc, 32.
117 Fairfax, 8.
118 Chesterfield, d12r, b32bv.
119 For discussion of those more privileged women who shifted back to maternal breastfeeding as the seventeenth century progressed (and the contrasting continental situation), see: David Harley, ‘ From Providence to Nature: the Moral Theology and Godly Practice of Maternal Breastfeeding in Stuart England’, Bulletin for the History of Medicine 69 (1995): 198–223.
120 Fildes notes that, unlike many parents, ‘ higher aristocracy’ tended to have wet nurses in their own homes, which would obviously have made adult use of milk easier. She also shows that sucking glasses’ were used to express milk in the seventeenth century (usually to improve milk flow in dry breasts). See Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 79, 88.
121 On quantities, see ‘Making Medicines’, 145–46. A broad comparison with the independent medical arts and supplies portrayed by Leong is offered in Stephen Bradwell’s Helps for Sudden Accidents Endangering Life (1633). This features internal and external mummy recipes for falls and bruising (79–84), and explicitly advertises itself to ‘those that live far from physicians or chirurgions’ but who may yet happily preserve the life of a poor friend or neighbour, till such a man may be had to perfect the cure’ (t-p). For more on Bradwell (or Bredwell) and this book’s status as the first English ‘ first aid guide’, see: Norman Gevitz, ‘"Helps for Suddain Accidents": Stephen Bredwell and the Origin of the First Aid Guide’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 67.1 (1993): 51–73.
122 Great Instauration, 255. Leong’s inference, that Freke used eight pints of her ‘ aqua mirabolus’ between 1710 and 1712, further suggests that such remedies were being fairly widely distributed (‘Making Medicines’, 164).
123 John Considine’s new DNB article on Grey states: ‘This work has often been ascribed to Elizabeth herself. However, W.I. Gent, who also produced a book of remedies for the plague in 1665 (his name may have been William Jervis), makes it clear in his prefatory matter that the collection was made by him for Elizabeth’s use: "this small Manuall … was once esteemed as a rich Cabinet of knowledge, by a person truely Honorable"’. Whilst it seems fairly certain that the recipes had diverse sources or authors, W.I.’s phrasing in his preface to Letitia Popham is by no means as clear as Considine claims (see A Choice Manual (1653), A2r–A3r).
124 ‘Women, Health and Healing in Early Modern Europe’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82.1 (2008): 1–17, 9. Cf. Furdell, who describes Kent’s book as ‘ sought after’, and notes that at least seven of its earlier editions were published by Gertrude Dawson (Publishing and Medicine, 109). On Hannah Woolley, author of the 1680 work The Queen-like Closet, see: L.F. Newman, ‘ Some Notes on Folk Medicine in the Eastern Counties’, Folklore 56.4 (1945): 349–60, 351–53; Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing (London: Routledge, 2000), 101–3.
125 Hermetical Physic (1655) 24–25. On Vaughan’s medical practice, see Alan Rudrum in new DNB. Cf., also, the influential educational reformer and admirer of Francis Bacon, Samuel Hartlib, who in this same year commended mummy against ulcers (Chymical, Medicinal, and Chyrurgical Addresses (1655), 96).
126 Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 106.
127 The Anatomy of Human Bodies, trans. William Salmon (1694), 118. For more on various errhines and their mode of operation, see Charas, Royal Pharmacopeia, 60–61.
128 Johann Schroeder, Zoologia, trans. anon. (1659), 39.
129 Zoologia, 42.
130 Zoologia, 48.
131 Zoologia, 48–51.
132 Zoologia, 58, 61.
133 Zoologia, 52–53.
134 Zoologia, 56–57. In 1660 Daniel Beckher’s Medicus Microcosmus was published in England. As well as a surprising number of ingredients from living bodies, Beckher’s work features human skin and brain, as well as the more predictable fat, cranium and mummy (Thorndike, History, VIII, 415). This work was first published in Rostock in 1622. Beckher died in 1655.
135 For usnea, see Choice and Experimented Receipts (1675), 27.
136 A Choice Collection of Rare Secrets and Experiments in Philosophy (1682), 197. For details on Digby’s life I am indebted to the article by Michael Foster in the new DNB. This book was published after Digby’s death (in 1665) by Hartman.
137 See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 115.
138 Adenochoiradelogia, or, An Anatomic-chirurgical Treatise of Glandules and Strumaes or, Kings- evil-Swellings (1684), 115–16. Browne was also surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital from 1683–91 (see Ian Lyle in new DNB). Elizabeth Furdell notes that Browne, originally from Norfolk, was mentored by Sir Thomas Browne (Elizabeth Lane Furdell, The Royal Doctors 1485–1714: Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2001), 182). For remedies involving skull and mummy at this time, see also Sir Ro
bert Sibbald, Scotland Illustrated (1684), 87, 5 (second reference from second page set); and Robert Johnson, Enchiridion Medicum, or, A Manual of Physic (1684), 6.
139 Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, trans. Samuel Pordage (1683), 160. This first appeared in Latin in 1672.
140 See, for example, the Spanish physician Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma (A Curious Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate, trans. Don Diego de Vades-forte (1640)); Anon., The Virtues of Chocolate East-India Drink (1660). Cf. also Henry Stubbe, The Indian Nectar, or, A Discourse Concerning Chocolata (1662). Dedicated to ‘ my learned friend, Dr Thomas Willis’, this provides Willis with ‘ the discourse I promised you, of chocolata’; describes the medicinal qualities of chocolate; and includes a chemical analysis by Charles II’s chemist, Nicaise Lefebvre. One Richard Mortimer, in Sun Alley in East Smithfield mixed up prescriptions from the recipes which Stubbe had given him (ibid., A6r–A7r). On 24 November 1664 Samuel Pepys records going ‘ to a coffeehouse, to drink jocolatte, very good’. See also Philippe Sylvester DuFour, The Manner of Making of Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate, trans. anon. (1685), 57–99, on the medical qualities of cocoa and those ingredients then typically mixed with it.
141 Unless otherwise stated, all biographical information on Willis is from Martensen’s article in new DNB. Martensen further notes that, whilst Willis left the bulk of his estate to his son Thomas … the three surviving younger children each received £3000’.
142 For Willis’s piety see especially Martensen, on the illicit prayer meetings of the Interregnum. On Willis’s avant-garde and scientific treatment of the brain, see Richard Sugg, The Smoke of the Soul: The Animated Body in Early Modern Europe (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming), ch. 9.
143 Dr Willis’s Practice of Physic (1684), 137, 138.
144 Practice of Physic, 69, 207, 79.
145 Practice of Physic, 149–50, 204, 159, 213.
146 An Essay of the Pathology of the Brain, trans. Samuel Pordage (1681), 71. This work first appeared in Latin in 1667. For epilepsy it also recommends human skull prepared’ (23), and a head plaster using powdered skull (24).
147 Practice of Physic, 160. The reference came originally from Willis’s 1672 book Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, where Willis locates the incident ‘six years ago’.
148 Practice of Physic, 160. Willis dedicated both his Essay on the Pathology of the Brain and Two Discourses … to Sheldon.
149 Practice of Physic, 159, 137.
150 Medicinal Experiments (1694), 51–52; Medicinal Experiments (1693), 37. Some of these recipes date from an earlier book, Some Receipts of Medicines … Sent to a Friend in America (1688). Cf. Michael Hunter in new DNB: He also brought out a collection of medical recipes in 1688; initially this was privately printed but a properly published edition appeared posthumously in 1692, with sequels appearing thereafter.’
151 Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects (1665), 197–98.
152 On Boyle’s piety, see: Michael Hunter, new DNB: ‘ The central fact of Boyle’s life from his adolescence onwards was his deep piety, and it is impossible to understand him without doing justice to this. His friends remarked after his death how "the very Name of God was never mentioned by him without a Pause and a visible stop in his Discourse"’. On Boyle’s evident hostility to incipient deism, see Michael Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 203–4. On Boyle’s anonymous theological works, see Joseph Agassi, Robert Boyle’s Anonymous Writings’, Isis 68 (1977): 284–87. On his piety and his strong belief in ‘ an active supernatural realm’, see Michael Hunter, Alchemy, Magic and Moralism in the Thought of Robert Boyle’, British Journal for the History of Science 23.4 (1990): 387–410, 388, 396, et passim.
153 Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (1663), 253.
154 Of the Reconcileableness of Specific Medicines to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1685), 126–27.
155 Of the Reconcileableness … (1685), 124–26.
156 When discussing Paracelsian ideas of transferring disease, Boyle is indeed relatively open-minded (see especially Memoirs for the History of Humane Blood (1683), 249–50).
157 Two of Boyle’s sisters, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, and Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh, were especially likely to know ‘great people’. However, Katherine was particularly close to Boyle. Moreover, she was, from 1643, closely associated with the Hartlib circle, and despite being forced to leave Ireland after the 1641 uprising, remained closely involved with the country in various ways (Sarah Hutton, new DNB). It therefore seems more likely that she would be interested in medicine, and that she would have more Irish contacts than her sister. Boyle’s family per se was of course immensely powerful in Ireland; Boyle’s father, Richard, was the richest man in the country, with an income of £18,000 by 1641 (see Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Making Good: New Perspectives on the English in Early Modern Ireland’, in British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland, ed. Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–27, 11). For more on Ranelagh, see: Ruth Connolly, A Proselytising Protestant Commonwealth: The Religious and Political Ideals of Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh (1614–91)’, The Seventeenth Century 23.2 (2008): 244–64.
158 ‘Locke’s Contribution to Boyle’s Researches on the Air and on Human Blood’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 17.2 (1962): 198–206, 198, 201.
159 ‘Locke’s Contribution’, 201. Cf. also Locke’s studies of blood under the microscope (An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1690), 140).
160 ‘Locke’s Contribution’, 201, 203.
161 Memoirs, 255–56; 40, 53–54, 57. Cf. also Certain Physiological Essays (1669), 240.
162 Memoirs, 328. The initial scepticism of this passage is echoed when Boyle refers to Burgravius and his lamp explicitly at Memoirs, 248–49.
163 Some Considerations, 327; Memoirs, 208–9.
164 For the value he set by these, cf. Memoirs, A3v.
165 Some Considerations, 326, 388.
166 Some Considerations, 329.
167 Michael Hunter, ‘ Robert Boyle’, new DNB. Peter Elmer, on French, states that according to Anthony Wood, French died in October or November 1657, at or near Boulogne in France’ (new DNB). Not only was this late in the year, but, given the distance, the news of his death may have taken some time to reach Boyle.
168 Boyle was also evidently discussing blood chemistry with natural philosophers on the continent; see, for example, Electronic Enlightenment (online resource, http://www.e-enlightenment.com/): translation from Latin into English of Israel Conradt to Robert Boyle, The Hague, 8 May 1672.
169 Boyle credits this formula to ‘ some loose papers’ sent to a friend (perhaps Locke?) ‘ many years ago’. If this too was written c. 1657, then Boyle’s recipe presumably dates back to at least 1650, if not earlier (Some Considerations, 326–27).
170 Some Considerations, 333–34.
171 Some Considerations, 276.
172 Memoirs, 210–12. If this is the same case as mentioned in Some Considerations, it probably predates the late 1650s; and this broadly matches the sense of distance implied in the Memoirs, where Boyle opens the story with ‘ as I remember’.
173 Memoirs, 334.
174 Some Considerations, 332.
175 Memoirs, 212–14.
176 Agassi, Robert Boyle’s Anonymous Writings’, 284.
177 See Family Magazine [1747], 85, 151, on blood and moss of the skull.
178 A letter (apparently written after April 1666) detailing the skull-moss and bloodletting case appears in Works, vol. 1 [1772], lxxxii. Cf. also: Works (1725), vol. 1, 92, 445, vol. 3, 574; Works (1772), vol. 5, 106.
179 One exception was Jonathan Swift, who sometime before 1745 referred to ‘ Goddards’ Drops’ in a burlesque death speech (Works (1765), XVI, 392).
180 The European Magazine (1789), XV, 272–73.
> 181 Quoted in: Women’s Worlds, 37–38.
182 The Diary of William Cartwright, ed. Joseph Hunter (BiblioBazaar, 2009), 26.
183 George Willis, Willis’s Current Notes (London, 1853), 25.
184 Mystery and Art, 205.
185 For more on Chiffinch, see Ewan Fernie in new DNB.
186 Notes of Me, ed. Peter Millard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 224–25. I am very grateful to David Thorley for his prompt assistance with this reference.
187 Quoted by: David Allen, ‘ The Political Function of Charles II’s Chiffinch’, Huntington Library Quarterly 39.3 (1976): 277–90, 277.
188 The Court at Windsor: A Domestic History (London: Longmans, 1964), 69.
189 The work was popular in both France and England, with a first edition of the English translation appearing in 1712, and a third in 1737.
190 See, for example, César de Rochefort, The History of the Caribby-Islands (1666), 305; Gervase Markham, The Husbandman’s Jewel (1695), 35.
191 Moise Charas (1618–98), a highly respected Jewish physician who had converted to Christianity, published his Royal Pharmacopeia in Paris in 1676. Charas himself further noted the use of a powder containing shavings of a man’s skull that died a violent death’ against fevers and poisoning, adding that the remedy prevails wonderfully against the small-pox’ (The Royal Pharmacopeia (1678), 122).
The Bloody Harvest Notes
1 As readers are probably aware, the Egyptians took the afterlife very seriously indeed. It is perhaps less widely known that in this culture the deceased were actually judged by a special panel of other citizens: if it was proved that the life of the deceased had been impious and scandalous, his memory was branded with infamy, and his body deprived of the rites of sepulture’ (‘ Antiquities of Egypt’, in Q. Curtius Rufus, The History of… Alexander the Great, trans. from French (1755), xxiv).
2 We know that Berengario da Carpi saw nearly intact’ Egyptian mummies in Venice sometime before 1518 (see: Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe, trans. David Gentilcore (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996), 47).