Good evening. Welcome to this wonderful program. As most of us, all of you, no, know, each year the partnership has a themed series of events after september 7. September 7 is the day on which boston, georgetown, and watertown were named and we always commemorate date. We have a series of events each year. This years theme is that medicine and mortality. Im here to tell you it is the most successful charter day we have ever had. Tell me if you have been to other events this year . Would you raise your hand . That is what i thought. This is a wonderful. Excellent. In addition to our fall activities, we have lectures, Reading Group discussions, and tours from april through november. We are an allvolunteer group that cares passionately about telling the forgotten history of boston from 1630 until the revolution. We do have three more programs coming up. Rescheduling the anticipated talk at the old statehouse by dr. David jones. It will be a wonderful closing to this whole theme and we will also have two more tours. We talk a lot about the renaissance man. We usually really do mean a man. But tonight, you are going to meet a renaissance woman. The depth and breadth of what lori lyn price does for science and history is amazing. First, her day job. She is a master degree in statistics from the ohio state university. She had a faculty appointment at the Tufts University school of medicine. And she is a biostatistician at Tufts Medical Center in does named as coauthor and 130 published medical research papers. Then we have the rest of her life, which includes work with the partnership of historic boston, a hand she just a earned a master of liberal arts and history from the harvard extension school. Her work focused on domestic medicine in 17thcentury england. She really is the expert on this area. She is also a professional historian and genealogical speaker and she owns reachingthepast. Com a wonderful site, that helps people connect with their ancestors. She is going to help us reach a 17thcentury bostonians and how they cope with illness tonight. Please welcome dr. Lori lyn price. Dr. Prof. Price thank you for having me here. I am delighted to be her. I am a little bit hoarse with a cough, but i am delighted to be here. If you have not visited the 18thcentury garden, i invite you to visit. We wanted to have this at the church because when we are talking about herbal remedies of medicine, we are relying heavily on gardens. They were not entirely herbal, based. They had other things they used as well. We were going to go on a tour of what was used in the homes. Not necessarily by the housewife, although we will be talking a lot about her, but what was used in the home throughout 17thcentury england. I will rely heavily on recipe books or as they called them back then receipt books. Back then they were all the rage. It was cool to collect them from all your friends, doctors, many that may have had the name like the king. Maybe it did not come from the king bed they thought it would work better than what you got from your friend or neighbor. My research is mostly in england, but it wouldve been very similar herein new england. So much of what i say will apply to both places. I am going to talk about to recipe books and particular. I will introduce you to them. The first is the Charles Brigham account book. Even though it has a mans name, he may be wrote two pages of accounts. The rest of the 200 or so pages are written by a woman, which is probably typical. It has a mans name that what is written by a woman. The ones i use for my thesis were created by a woman in england in 1650. She died in 1688, she was collecting recipes almost until she died because there was a recipe and there from a book published in 1687, one year before she died. There were actually 450 recipes but the book was in pretty poor shape when it was donated in the 1970s. So, she also collected culinary recipes which i did not focus on because any recipe book would have both the medical and culinary recipes. Many times they would be interspersed together. She had them separated. And then, after she died, somehow the book made its way over here and came into the brigham family. Three generations of women then added more recipes. I will get to those eventually but not today. So, that is where the recipe books come from. The other recipes, many of the other recipes come from the Martha Washington cookbook. Have any of you heard from this cookbook . This cookbook was not Martha Washingtons. She owned it at one time but by the time she owned it it was likely a family heirloom. It was written generations earlier and like many recipe books, passed down through the generations. I should add that both of these books are manuscript books. The Charles Brigham book i am in the process of transcribing but it is not published anywhere and karen has published an annotated addition of the Martha Washington cookbook. Books we willthe use. I will cover the slides and detail and they will be available and they will be available in cspan later. This is a recipe from the brigham account book. It is for coffee or consumption. It could mean any respiratory illness. Some of the ingredients are strong stale ale, aquanity, ellecampane roots, loafe suger, cloaves, cynamon. And if you find your stuff still feeling sick, you can have another before dinner. The hells come the husband come the train doctor, the midwife, all of them understood at the same way and this with the foundation made believe. They believed there were four elements in the body and and terms of what im going to focus on, they had hot, cold, wet, and dry. So you will hear a lot about hot, cold, wet, dry. We had ideal balance. It might be different between us but for my body, if i was in the ideal balance i would be healthy. If any of the humors were out of balance, i would be sick. I would have symptoms, headache, fever, all kinds of things that would indicate my humors were out of balance. They did not believe in this time and distinct illnesses. It is not like i had a specific fever or migraine. I just had a symptom of humors being out of balance. We might have the same symptoms that our humors might be out of balance and different ways. There was not a given, said disease. This is called hormonal theory. Or galenic medicine. This idea was codified in the second century in the common era. It is called galenic medicine after him. It could cause humors . It could be a simple chill, emotional upset, poorly digested milk, unbalanced diet, a change in activity level, san, or or a change in activity level. You could become much more active or less active which could create an imbalance in the humors. They did understand diseases were contagious and so they did not understand that bugs or contact withing passed. Someone who is sick, that would be just enough to contain their perturb yourh to own humors. And you could get sick with perhaps the same symptoms. In terms of diet, today we are familiar with myplate. Gov which has the ideal balance of meat and dairy, back then it was hot and cold and wet and dry. It might not be equal portions, 25 of each, but you would certainly want to have elements of each of these if you are already healthy and wanted to maintain your health. If you are already healthy, you wanted good that had a mix of hot and cold and wet and dry properties. If you are not in balance, if you had too many hot humors, he would try to eat some cold. How did they know the child which properties . It was something you would learn growing up. Your mother would teach you if you were a woman and the men would probably pick it up along the way as well. If you did not know, there were all kinds of resources you could go to, which we will tell you about in a moment. In new england, one might be fish. Cold and wet. If you were to have fish, you had your balanced meal of cold and wet fish. Garlic was also hot and dry. Lemon cucumbers were cold and wet. Beef, lay gums, bread, and ive were called and dry. Bread, coldumes, and dry. There were books telling you about the varying degrees of heat or cold. It can be firstdegree or third degree. You could really get into this if you wanted to. Many of you saw the garden out back. The 18thcentury garden. Here are the 17th century gardens. There is one in ipswich which is wonderful. This is part of the garden. This is really part of it. When you go there, you will notice it is marked, heres the mint, here is the thyme. They would not have had it they just wouldve known. Culinary items were often one in the same but somewhere purely culinary or purely medicinal. They also grew things that would help with dyeing materials. They have many different gardens from different times here. This is half of the garden. The other half is, i could not take the other half of the picture. Now, if i was a woman starting out in my own household, now in charge of taking care of my husbands and kids to come, hopefully my mother would have trained me well but i also would have had a lot of other resources. One of which is recipe books. This one is from the Wellcome Library in london. They have a wonderful collection of Library Manuscript books. Many you can look at it for free, some you have to purchase. There are similar collections in the United States, not many is good. Good. Nearly as that is my goal, to start collecting some of the books that might have some u. S. Specific recipes to expand the database i have. If you are lucky you had a recipe book. With the Charles Brigham book, whoever donated it in the 1970s, they put this wonderful note which is not true but still a nice thought, that hannah was getting married and going to marlborough in 1710, out into the wilderness in the middle of nowhere and so her mother was worried about her and made this recipe book. Not true. Because the recipe book began, most of it was compiled already by 1688, but somehow she ended could be her mother gave for the recipe book that had already been compiled in then it was passed down through several generations of the family and added to every time. You could, and also, not only a few did not have your recipe book as i mentioned, making recipe books was all the rage so you could start asking your friends, family, doctors, midwives, whoever might have good recipes, you could ask them to start your own collection. A lot of people did that. There were also published books. This is gerards herbal. How many of you are familiar with this . You should become familiar with it. It is a wonderful book published in the late 1500s and captain and kept in print for most of the 1600s. You can see on the front there are some wonderful drawings. The version i have is black and white. He has some really nice drawings of the plants and along with them he has descriptions of where you can find them, what they look like, what you can use them for. We are going to look at this. Foxglove. This is in the garden. One of the gardeners here took the picture and shared it with me. I am going to read you what gerard has to say. He says, foxglove as a purple flowers at most common. Are most common. The leaves are long. It goes on for another couple of paragraphs. It talks about where you can find it. It says foxglove grows and Barren Grounds and under hedges almost everywhere. Remember, this is in england. This is where you can find it in england. They flourish in june and july. He gives the name and french. In french. He says the foxglove in that they are bitter are hot and dry. The hot and dry properties. Yet, are they of no use . Any place in medicine according to the ancients . Keep in mind this was First Published in the 1500s. Not until the 1700s did people realize foxglove was useful for treating cardiac issues. Also, culpepper was another famous person in the time. This is published around the scene 50. 1650. These are two of his books together. He was one of the growing number of people who thought that knowledge should not be held in the hands of the few trained physicians but given to everyone which is really good that we , have all of this in terms of, you know, i will read you a short example but most of them are quite detailed. So somebody who wanted to know more could dig into this but much of the knowledge would not have been. Have been new. People already knew what these medications were used for. They might have known for the most part, if they were hot or dry. He gave a lot more detail at that it was important to get out to the laypeople. In the 1650s there was a huge explosion of publications that were published in england on medicine. So there really was this idea that knowledge should not remain in the hands of the physicians, that it should be spread out. On the other hand, most people already knew what this was, so there is kind of a little tradeoff there. We are going to read about the bouncing bets. He is very detailed. His book is about that thick. Really small, double column. He wants to get as much information to you as he can. The roots creep underground. With many joints therein. Ronald the outside, yellow with them. The outside, yellow with them. Then it goes on and says, and a place that grows wild in many low and went lands, by brooks and the side of running water. The flowers usually under lien continues and part of september before they are spent. In terms of the government and virtues, government is it is governed by astrology. He was a strong believer in astrology. So he talked about with sign it under andign it is the virtues are what it treats. He says it been us owns it, the country people in diverse places use it to brew and put it on their fingers, hands, and legs when theyre cut to heal them up again. It is diuretic all to provoke urine nad therefore to expel gravol in the kidneys and do it singularly good to avoid tropical waters. They extol it to perform an absolute cure of syphilis. More than sarsaparilla can do. The country can use it for their cut, other people say it is good for provoking urine and we will talk about why you might want to do that later, and then some people say it is good for the french pox. Most of what he has as much longer. Then, there were books such as this. This is the english housewife published in 1615. It was on trend through most of the 1600s, written by a man, egg again, telling the housewife all of the virtues are or characteristics she should have. One is an medicine. He said, it is needed that she have a physical or medicinal kind of knowledge, how to administer wholesome receipts for the good of health to prevent the first occasion of sickness and to take way the effects and evil of the same when it has made seizure on the body. She is supposed to know a lot about medicine. Enough to prevent illness and her family and when illness enters her family, to take care of it. But he goes on to say, she should not know too much because too much is what the physician should know. So there is a fine line between how much she could know and how much she should not know. Then there is the explosion of literature, medicine in the 16 1650s. Here is one of hhannah woolleys books. You might ask, how did they make medicine . There were 13 or 14 apothecaries in boston. Im not sure when they first started. In 1630, when John Winthrop came over, there was someone on board who called himself an apothecary. Whether he was for real or not, we do not know. Around the 1700s, there were i started to be apothecaries and so apothecaries were nice in that you could go and buy premade medicines. It takes a long time to make medicines. They would also have things you might not be able to grow. Or that you would not have the ingredients to make. Well talk about some of those. I had the experience to learn what it was like to make medicine in the 1600s at a plantation a couple years ago. I went for a workshop and there were just two of us there and we were given a sheet about 10 pages with about 2030 on it and heres the picture, heres what theyre called, heres what they do. In order to make a medicine like that the due in the 1600s, we to dot like they had treat. We decided we wanted our medicine to treat muscle and joint pain and inflammation. So once we decided on that, we then pick from the list about eight plants, that is how many they said you need. We picked, free, st. Johns wort, marshmallow, rosemary and others. Then we went out into the gardens. This is a picture of me picking from the gardens. We went to the plymouth plantation gardens. None of them grew in all one garden, we had to go to several gardens. We read the whole plant here, we were not going to take the whole plant. We did not use the roots, sometimes you need to but we took the stem, the leaves come the flowers, the seeds, anything else that might be on the stem we would take. And we had to get a lot of it. We filled to big baskets full. We took them back to the workshop and cut them into pieces probably about the size of a quarter of your palm because we wanted them small enough that we could draw out all of the essences. When youre making medicine with goebbels, any botanicals, you want to dry out the medicinal purposes. Many times you are going to make an ointment or sell. The cut them up small enough so we can get as much of the essence as possible and then we put it into a pot with oil and then we left. It took about two hours. There was an intern there so she watched over this. This was the 21st century. It wouldve taken a much longer to do this over a fire but we wanted to let the plant oils soak up the essence or virtues or medicinal properties. A number is done, we no longer needed the plants a week strained it, to the oil, and added beeswax. We made about 20 jars. The jars were probably about this pick. We made 1520 jars. So if you are a housewife and only wanted to make one or two or three you would have to very carefully decide what proportion you needed. We made a a lot. We were told it lasted about a year. Back then they did not often think in terms of expiration dates so they probably wouldve kept it for much longer as long as it seemed to work. Couple weeks ago i was up in charles town, new hampshire, when they are having an 18thcentury medicine day. I spent a long time talking with a midwife. She had this wonderful collection of all of these things as a midway. Fresh herbs from her garden, fresh plants, dried herbs and plants, teachers, selves, bottles of dried and powdered plants. I asked her, how would they know when you could not any longer use it and she was like well, once it does not seem to work. So, there are a few recipes ive seen that do give expiration dates but most of them do not. I also asked her, you have quite the collection, i know your midwife, what would the average woman have . She said, they would have a lot of this stuff but not all of it. It would depend on woman to woman, just like real might have our favorite spices for cooking, they would have their favorite herbs and spices for medicine. It would have as much as they needed. The other types of medicines she might would make are tea, where you could use fresh tentacles or herbs. They would have fruit, i have a friend who likes fruitinfused water. She puts fruit in the water. On the plantation, when we were waiting for the plants and the oils stew, we went back out and got some more plants and talked with one of the workers who knows a lot about medicine and she happened to have been bitten by wasp. She went over to a plant, picked it off, rubbed it on and felt better immediately. They would also use it just like that whenever they needed it. In terms of the ointments, they would stored in containers like this on the bottom right and cover it with either paper or cloth they would type tightly. They would tie tightly. Keep in mind they might not have a lot of room to store things so they had to think carefully about what they would make to store. So what types of medicines were made . This is from my thesis, not actually published in my thesis but part of the research i did from the rhythm up. For the brigham book. She herself divided it into three sections. She did not label them. I labeled them. She did have a Different Number system for each. She considered them three different sections. When he 5 external medications, 32 waters, and 43 internal or something you would ingest. In terms of the internal, broths and cordials, lots of liquids, powder, and a paste, pills, and serve. In terms of external it was a bath, a few drops would be a little bit nervous about putting any into my eye. Then, hostesses, liquids, selves, ointments, that sort of thing. Poltuices, liquids, selves, ointments, that sort of thing. Then the water, the most interesting and i think the most important. The basis for many things. So, waters are, anything liquid, anything you make you might put in a bunch of herbs and stranded out and keep water. That would be a water. Even though it might be our call. Winds or alcoholic drinks. Wines or alcoholic drinks. They could be medication by themselves. For example, rosewater. You make it by taking roses, you distill them, if use them, you do something with them to come up with a water and then you can use that yourself for medication. You can also use it as an ingredient in other medications. Many times a recipe calls for a water. Or you could use it as a vehicle. Some are powders sewn order to order to getrs, in it digested, you have to do it with a liquid. So waters were used for all of those purposes. I wanted to see what was the most common botanicals in these 400 recipes. So, these 10 come from about 400 recipes and they are the ones that showed up in at least 20 of the recipes. Cinnamon, ginger, licorice, mace, nutmeg, raisins, rosemary, saffron, wormwood, and rue. I checked to see what it was for and many of them were use for many. Many call for 5 to 20 ingredients. And these wouldve cinnamon, mace, nutmeg girls ar spices. Most imported from elsewhere said they would be more expensive. Because they are more expensive, rare they are thought to be more potent so you would want to use them if you could. One of the other things i mentioned was these recipes have 5, 20, 30 ingredients. They would use what they had. If they did not have all 20, they would use with they had. They would modify and experiment and say, you know what . Nutmeg does not work so i will not use it again. So i will talk a little bit about how they would make medication. At least in this book, what some of the common botanicals are and if i were to look at other books it would probably be a different mix of what would be most common because people chose what they liked. Lets talk about some of the diseases. This is smallpox. This is a little girl suffering from smallpox in the 1970s. In london, in the 1600s, it was an endemic disease like chickenpox. Always around, a childhood disease. It was much more lethal than chickenpox but if you survived childhood in london you were exposed to smallpox, you survived and you are immune for the rest of your life. However, in new england and boston it was a completely different story because there were just not enough people to sustain it to be an endemic disease. There might be 20 or 30 years between smallpox outbreaks and sell anyone born during that time, children to eight 30yearold adult would be exposed and likely die from it. So smallpox was probably one of the scariest things to head new england because i never knew when it was going to head and when it did hit, it had 1520 mortality rate. Some of the worst outbreaks were in the 1600s and in 1721. 1721 was a unique outbreak because Cotton Mather had heard about inoculation. An occupation is when you take someone who is sick, they have these pusfill things you break. You take and get the pus and make and on my skin, put it in. So now i have smallpox. The idea was i would still get smallpox but a much milder case. There is a lot of contention. It was very controversial. Only one of the physicians one along with Cotton Mather, the others were against it. Many of the newspapers were against it. Benjamin franklin mentions this in one of his letters. What ended up happening was the people who were not related, if peopleple whp were inoculated, most of them survived. The mortality rates among those and not generated was significantly smaller than those who were not inoculated. It was a success but remained controversial throughout the 1700s. George washington mandated after an outbreak that all of his troops be and not related. There was a lot of controversy but it was done. In 1796, then the vaccination came out for it. Other epidemics included measles, diphtheria, those sorts of things were also epidemics. So what really killed people with some of the common everyday stuff that was always around. What are those things were fluxe s. Diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, dysentery. One of those things were things coming out of your body which you dont want coming up. This is a recipe from someone who lived in new england, massachusetts in the 1750s. There was a book written about her called one colonial womans world. Those are her recipes for all sorts of fluxes. You would know what to do with it. There were a lot of things in these recipes that you already knew what to do with. One you did that, you gave it four times. The first time, as hot as you can drink it. The next time, not quite as hot. 4 00 in the morning and 4 00 at night. Another thing they had issues with was digestion. This is spirit of mint. Spirit often meant oil. You can think of as essential oils we think of today. This is from Martha Washingtons cookbook. Stay as vomiting, comforts of these spirits. Expels wind and helps. The concoction can be thought of as digestion but they thought of it as a different way than we do. Then they thought the stomach was like a little oven. The food would go down to your stomach and cook. If it cooked well, you would have good digestion. If it did not cook well, it would stay in your stomach, putrefy and all kinds of bad things can happen because it would become poisonous or give off poisonous vapors. So this was supposed to help that. And then worms. Everybody had worms back then. Talking about the excavation of a privy of a wealthy woman in the late 1600s, they found evidence of worms in her households. All had it. Kids, adults, rich, poor. This is specifically for take curb tead melt. Nd there were also solutions specifically for children and recipes specifically for other parts of the body to get rid of worms. Then there are other issues. Womens issues. I am specifically not talking about childbirth because that would not specifically be done in the home. You would call in a midwife. But they did have to take care of themselves and take care of the issues that might arise. One of them could be that you were not having your period. Not having your period is a bad thing if you are not pregnant. They thought it would be bad because it would stay in your womb. It was poisonous to begin with, so it causes all kinds of problems. So you do not want to not have your period. If youre pregnant that is ok, because it is feeding the baby or ok if you are breastfeeding because it is being used as milk. But if youre not pregnant, breastfeeding, and not having your period, that was bad. So this is a recipe. All of the things i am going to read are known madder root, juniper berries, mugwort, mother time, samicle, bay berries. You would brood and beer and beer anduld brew in wine, and drink daily. Until they come. Meaning period. These are abortifacients. To start the period again. Rebecca has been some time with this and she thinks this particular recipe from the account book is just used as an amenigog, not an abortificant. It may have been used as a code word, some of the recipes. That is the talk of the midwife. They knew about womens issues and many of the recipes deal with menstrual disorders in the account books. And i like this. I like the idea that they knew how to make cough drops back then. This is how to make an excellent cough. For a juice of licorice, sugar candy, alkerms, ambergreece, oyle of ammiseeds, gume dragon, redd rose water, when it works like a paste take it out and cut it into pellets and when they are dried you may take them when you please. Let them dissolve in your mouth. A dropsy is an accumulation of fluid and the body. Notice whether hot or cold. You could have too many hot humors are too many cold humors, either way it could construct the but either way that this should work. There is red mint, or what we call archangel toay. Stamp them together, strain the juice of them into some stale ale, and servitude drink morning and evening. For my thesis, i looked at the efficacy statement of how well this is work. This work. Does it is not that common to say it will affect the cure. That is not you are hoping to do it medicine. You are not expected to be cured very often. So if the recipes that it would affect the cure, that is a pretty strong statement. She says god willing it will effect the cure. Now we will move into what was effective medication. If you are sick you had an imbalance. You wanted to get the humors out. You wanted to get them out by whatever means possible. Vomiting, diarrhea, provoking the urine, diarrhea, sweat, putting them in bed by the fire and letting them sweat, they would also do cupping. You mightve seen on the olympics a couple years ago, all of the red spots. Olympians were doing it for a different reason. Putting a cup to the skin and it would get read and blister. Make a blister so there would be pus, getting stuff out. The better the medicine worked, the more stuff got out. So it was not to make you better, medicine that worked was one that got a whole bunch of stuff out. And then hopefully the idea was, eventually you would feel better. The medicine itself would not get you better it would just get the bad stuff out so your humors could get back into balance. So here is a picture of someone bloodletting. You would call a professional for bloodletting. Bloodletting was a very popular way of getting rid of excess humors. This would require a physician or somebody who is trained. Depending upon how well you are and what kind of illness you had or what kind of symptoms you had, what time of year was, they might lead you from your head, from your here, from your arm, from your leg, from your foot, all kinds of things went into how much to lead you. Bleed you. Bleeding was not done in children because it was thought to be too dangerous but they had blistering and cupping and all of the difference kind of purging for kids. They could go awry. There is some research into the death of George Washington in 1799, he came down with a threat throat distemper which is some kind of throat illness. He wanted to be heavily bled. They took 3. 75 litres of his blood over 48 hours. In and youd they took 3. 75 litres of his hours and he died. That is over half of his blood. Usually, they were much more cautious and reasonable about how much blood they got but sometimes it can go awry. Here is an example of purge for the prevention of gout as well as a cure. Cure,using the word which is pretty strong. Nutmeg, and keep to your chamber. I dont know if this causes you to have upward or downward purging, but you will have some type of purging and you will need to keep your chambers that day. You will take it four times in a year, twice in the spring and twice in the fall, for prevention. If you have it again, you are going to take it again for the cure of a flare of gout. Doubt was fairly common back gout was fairly common back then. Then, we move into magic. They would not have called it magic as we think of it today. It wouldve been another completely reasonable thing they could use that was completely consistent with their religious beliefs. We today would probably call it magic, some of it. How many of you are harry potter fans . How many of you know, and im not sure if i am saying it right, but how many of you know what this is . Shouted out and i will repeat it. Shout it out and i will repeat it. She remembers the scene but doesnt remember what it is for. Do you remember what it was for . I want to say, what i remember was for poison. Ron was poisoned. What they were used for in harry potter. In harry potter, ron was poisoned. Harry had just remembered he learned about this thing called a bezoar stone, and harry potter ran and got it and ron was cured. What they actually are, at least , are stones period that come from the gut of a goat. They are thought to be an antidote against poison, as shown in harry potter. They were thought to be an antidote against other things. This is an example where you taken inanimate object, or plants or minerals, stones, that have come up for whatever reason, they have extra power. If you use them, you will have stronger medicine. This is an example from Martha Washingtons cookbook where she uses three waters. I told you recipes have three waters. She does not say how we get the beazer water. I assume you take the stone and put it in some kind of liquid. Perhaps alcoholic, perhaps some other botanicals. Do your distillation, then in the end, you have the water. You take the water and it is an approved antidote against contagion of the plague, the purples, a skin disorder and smallpox and measles. Take two spoonfuls, mix it with angelica water. This is to prevent these things. Because you are using the beazor stone water it is supposed to be stronger. It is supposed to be a good antidote. This is one that i believe haves has some ritualistic things but im still trying to figure them out. This comes from the brigham account book and is found in many recipe books that many chose to include in their recipe books. Waterthe most improved for consumption. Take a running cock and kill him alive and when he is almost cold, cut him and take out his entrails. Wipe him clean. This is the part that i think is ritualistic. Cut him in quarters and break the bonds. I dont know why you would do that, except there might be some magical ritual involved. Herbs,l add several raisins and some other things, and three more magical items. A puddle of new milk of a red cow, and the new milk of a red cow, i see fairly often. I dont there is something magical or unique about the red cow. When i gave this talk a couple months ago, somebody suggested it could have to do with the fat content in the milk of different species of cows. Whether they know about that fat content back then are new or new about the type of milk that worked well, that could be a possibility. Leaf gold is what you think it is. Who is the only wealthy could put this in. Prepared carol, like the pearls you wear around your neck. And things that you would get from an apothecary would be unicorn horn, which doesnt exist, so that is an example of fraud right there. Mummy,mmia, which is from egypt, again, whether or what you were buying. Whether or not you got it is questionable. It was thought to have properties. It was the wrappings and resins that were thought to have magical properties. And then, they also had another kind of magic called transference, where you would transfer your illness to an animal or inanimate object, in this case an animal. This is to cure plaque or pestilence. Swelling under the ears, armpits or groin, draw them forth, pull off the feathers from the tales of pigeons or chickens hold them hard to the swelling and keep , them at the part until they die. So you are going to, say i have it in i armpit. You will break the boil. You will take one of these birds, pull off the tailfeathers, and there is probably something magical there. You will take the bird by the bill and hold it here until he dies. The thought is, once he dies, he has died from the plague but not from the trauma. So he dies from the plague, areefore he, therefore you free of the plague because you have transferred it from you to the bird. Then, sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic is using things that look alike to do something. For example, from the brigham account book, to prevent a woman from miscarrying a child, it says to use blood red silk. It does not say what to do with it. I brought this up with the herbalist, the doctor i saw at the 18thcentury medicine weekend. He said that was sympathetic magic because silk is shiny and the silktringy, and represents the blood and he suggested they would tie it in a not, the silk, and that meant you were cutting off the blood flow. So the blood flow couldnt come out because you tied it off with the silk, which is Something Like the blood. Another part of the same recipe is to take a broth made from cows feet. There are plants that are thought to have Properties Like this. They are thought to be like this. Therefore, you were knitting together the bottom so the child cannot come out. Those are examples of sympathetic magic. It does not want to go. Astrology. Astrology was added at the zenith i guess in english in the mid1600s when it was the most popular and seen as a science. If you really got into it, if i was ill, i would go to my astrologist or physician or whoever practiced, they would find out what sign i was born under, what sign i got when i contracted the illness, and when symptoms started, what symptoms they are, and they would decide based on that what unique treatment i need based on all those signs. Whether that probably was not all that common, because it took another a lot of knowledge to do that, what was more common to find of the best time under the astrological sign to plant herbs and other plants to harvest them when they had their most potency. That was in the almanac. Almanacs were popular and when people wanted to, because in large part because of the medical astrology, the sections they had. When people wanted to get rid of them, when the publishers said this is just a bunch of hooey, we want to get rid of that, people said no way. We need this. So that persisted for a long time. Here is an example to make powder. Recipeve this is another that is seen all over the place in all kinds of recipe books. When the sign is in cancer, june 22july 22, what quantity you will at two ounces, and perl and coral, two ounces of white amber, a quarter of an ounce of bezar. You make it into a powder and it was good against smallpox, measles, or fever. This could be the animal we are thinking of, and there is a plant called that. Whether it is a plant of the animal. Take it when it is in cancer, when you will get the most potency of the medication. Up until now, we have talked , and astrology. Theye take everything like, just like today, we have western medicine, alternative medicine, there are many people strongly inbelieve western medication. There are some things that no matter what it is, i will not only rely on western medications. For things like headaches, im i might want to try and essential oil. People back then would do the same thing. Take things that make sense to them, they might have their favorite medicines and remedies. It became more popular in the there was one more thing from 1600s. Which they could draw. Remember there were two main differences from galenic medicine. There were no distinct diseases. If people hadd similar symptoms, it was not because they had similar diseases. It was because your humors were imbalanced. It relies heavily on botanical medications. Things,magic and other but it relies heavily on botanical medication. But another type of medicine says there are distinct diseases. If you have an headache and i have a headache, we need the same treatment. It is the same thing, the same source, it is not the humors, they are distinct diseases. They liked using chemical drugs. Ike lead, sulfur, mercury it became stronger and stronger until, i was surprised when i was researching the mexicanamerican war in the 1840s, that a lot of the men, they were complaining about the treatments, which were sulfur and mercury. Was he really trying to kill them . Was he really trying to kill them . When i looked into it, that was legal, a standard of medicine in 1840s, what is called heroic medicine, this chemical medicine. Paracelsian medicine used other religious theology. Because of that, it became popular puritan physicians because they liked the religious aspect of it. One of the other things that it reintroduced, this was part of gallenic medicine but wasnt as ofular, was the doctrine signatures. It was like sympathetic magic. So yellow saffron would be good for jaundice. Kidney beans, good for kidneys. They look like kidneys. Read plants good for Heart Disease and ferns, good for baldness. There were all sorts of things they thought treated like this. And last but not least, religion. There could be a spiritual reason. There could be a spiritual cause dear symptoms. Galenicre thinking medicine, that would cause your humors to go out of balance as a punishment from god. You werent doing what you were supposed to be doing. They determined whether something worse something was spiritual, im not sure how they knew but somehow, they did, if it was a spiritual cause, you needed to repent and make yourself right with god. The minister was much more than much more useful than a physician because the minister could help you make yourself right with god. And so, even know some of the even though some of the done in ald not be home, the housewives and their families would keep this in mind. The only things they would go outside of the house for, they might go to the apothecary because it takes a lot of time to make medication, or with mumi a, they couldnt make that themselves. They might go to a minister for a spiritual cause. For bloodletting, they would go to a physician. Aey would know this was possibility and they would decide on their own what they should do based on the situation. People ask about native american medicine. Did they use native american medicine . The answer is yes, eventually. Not right away because there were two conflicting thoughts. One is that english herbs are best for english bodies. Those who lived in england for centuries, use these herbs and botanicals for centuries, we know theyre good for english bodies and even though we have now moved to this new place called new england, we are still english so english herbs are still best for english bodies. So that was the tie of england to keep using the same stuff they were using for centuries but there is also another popular thought that wherever you were, there were diseases specific to that place, and god would put the things you needed to treat those diseases in that place. So from what climate, soever is subject to any particular disease, in the same place there grows a cure. So they were now in new england, new place, potentially new diseases, new symptoms, so they should use what was there. Where better to learn from that than from the native americans who had been using them for centuries . So they did take many, in the end, they did use, it depended on the person. Were more likely to take them than others. I talked mostly about the house wife, and i want to talk more about the other members of the household. Young children, especially young women, if someone was sick there needed to be someone watching them all the time and that usually fell to the young women. Sometimes, the children. Men would be involved, and they would be involved mostly, some of them would help make medications. Some of them would help with the nursing, although that was rare. At least in england. I am basing that on english research. One of the things that men did in england and new england was right letters. One of the things it was quite popular was writing same, my wife is really sick and i need, i am writing to you the physician or to you, my motherinlaw, what is your favorite recipe to a about the to help combat the symptoms she has . They were very involved in that. That is all that i have. Now, we are open for questions. Have ar, if you question, stand up and they will come to you with the boom microphone. [applause] professor price are there any questions . I am just wondering how soon it was when you had all of those imported things like the mace and nutmeg, do those come in the early 17th century . Or was it later . Prof. Price her question is about the mace and nutmeg, were they here earlier did they come later . The answer is, im not sure. My guess is they would be later. To my knowledge, there is a dearth of research about when things were available here in new england. I know a lot about one things when things were available in england, and knowing they were available in england, they couldve come over. Not in 1620 or 1630 because you needed plants and other things close to survive. So when did they come . My guess would be the late 1600s. But i am not sure and that is something, when i look at the cookbooks and other records from the 1600s in new england, i am hoping to learn some of those things because there is not a lot of their not a lot out there. So, the gold leaf, the pearl, as you pointed out, they are very expensive. Can you talk about those that , social status and people who essential essentially were elite and had wealth versus those who didnt . Did they see the recipes as , additive rather than cumulative, that you could use whatever of the list of ingredients you wanted to if you wanted to make it a little more, better, more intense, you added maybe some of the more exotic ingredients . I am intrigued by the social status of people. Certainly the women are literate and some of these are expensive recipes. Prof. Price the first question is, talk about the social status. Some of the things i mentioned, believe gold, the pearls, are very expensive. Who will be using those . The second question is whether they were additive or cumulative. Do you need to have everything . Is that right . One of the things i shouldve mentioned is that the recipe books that we have by and large come from wealthy people because they were the ones who were literate and could write things down. So we dont know, we know that some of the less wealthy people were using some of the same recipes. We dont know exactly what they were using because much of what they used was passed down orally but never written down. There is a bias towards wealthier people. Having said that, whether it was cumulative or additive is that people would use what they had. Even if your recipe called for goldleaf and perl, if you couldnt afford it, you would use the other stuff you had. You would use what you had, and were very,his period especially in england, really interested in experimentation. So science and what they called philosophy was becoming very popular. There were all these journals andjournalism societies various things and what people would do when the household is, they would take the medication or the recipe and experiment and see if they added this thing, if it made it better or worse. There was experimentation, but mostly, they used what they had. My question sort of centered around the slide you had with the various things in red that had been studied and had been known to be a man of gods gogues. You have any expansion on that in terms of the older remedies or Home Remedies that now have modern research that is back to maybe a potential benefit . Price the question what about was about to be about the abortifacients. I was instead efficient a statistician. One of the classes i took was a World History class, and i ended up coming up with two books published in the media will theod the media will. Ediegval period i looked at womens disorders, dealing with menstrual disorders, and i looked at superstitions, and childbirth. My question was, do these work according to our definitions today . By and large, in terms of the medical, not the childbirth but the other stuff, they knew what they were doing. A lot of that has been proved today. They also knew they could cause abortions with these, and people would use this to cause abortions. Was notn, abortion illegal until you felt the child quicken, which was around four or five months. Up until then, you could argue, i did not know i was pregnant. Even when you felt the baby move, you might know it was the baby but others might not know. So they would, some people would use them for abortions. Many people either didnt know they were pregnant or didnt care. They werent trying to cause an abortion, they wanted to get the blood flowing again. They did not want to cause an abortion but they wanted to get the blood flowing again. Some worked very well in causing abortion and they work very well amenogogue. Thank you very much. This was very informative. One thing that resonated for me, common botanicals, things like cinnamon and ginger have a current application for Healing Properties so many times probably a lot of that stuff did work and that is why the strength of that legacy came down and now there is western science to kind of legitimize it. Some of those common botanicals are the list of some of the super foods or medicinal foods. Her comment was more of a comment than a question, that many common botanicals like cinnamon have proven benefits today. I would agree that they may not have known exactly what they were doing, but they had a good idea that even if they had a lot of ingredients and two or three of them worked, they may not have known which two or three, but there was a lot of stuff they did back then that is proven today that it worked. Right here, the lady standing up. This is the other end of the question about expensive ingredients. What is roach elm . Price i was trying to figure up what it was. It is used today. You want to get the kind without ellum in it. It is some kind of crystalline, and maybe the positions know what it is. Google did not serve me well. Some sort of crystalline thing they could use. It was not a plant. It was some sort of mineral or crystal. Do you have any idea . It is something people can still get today, i think. No, it is a mineral. It is a mineral or rock or crystal. It is not insectbased. Ok. I have a comment and a question. My comment was, you had mentioned astrology or seasonal , like watching the signs are whatever, choosing to harvest herbs at a specific time. My comment there would be that plants bloom or flour or go to seed at different times so they would have different properties, which i find interesting. Maybe at a time when they had a lot of time to observe nature,bserve their gardens, and then if you could speak to that. My other question is, what are you doing for your cough and sore throat . Take those cough drops that i said. One of her questions is, what do you do for a cough or sore throat . I do have several recipes. The one that i showed you had various things in it that you could make craft arts. You good used to make cough drops. You could use to make cough drops. Her first question, the final question it will have to be, to harvest something for its seed rather than for its leaves or its flowers, you might want to harvest it that different times. This was developed over centuries. They knew when, they had learned when the best time was to harvest things. More they always write . Probably not. Were they write a lot . Probably. This is what they did to survive. This isnt the only thing they did. They had to do a bunch of other things. But medicine in the home was something the woman had to know pretty well. I will stick around if there are any further questions, but we cant take any more questions now. Thank you very much. [applause] 50 years ago, the United States was at war in vietnam. This veterans day weekend, American History tv, look back with 48 hours of coverage starting saturday, november 11. We are live from the national archives. Three vietnam Era Helicopters and the veterans who flew them. We are taking her call sent ets live with historians your calls and tweets live with historians. At 1 00 p. M. , from the veterans memorial, a ceremony with remarks by chuck hagel and memorial designer myelin. Lin. A the and him were special report. Whether it is due to the enemys clever tactics or the fighting conditions, the weather or the terrain, it seems clear the American Military offensive along the dmz has bogged down, like the marines in the mud. At 6 00 on american thefacts, we will tour exhibit remembering vietnam. Lyndon johnsons vietnam war press conference. We made our statement about what we would do if we had communist aggression in that part of the world in 1954. We said we would stand with those people in the face of common danger, and the time came when we had to put up or shut up. And we put up, and we are there. Watch the vietnam war 50 years later, next weekend on American History tv on cspan3. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Monday morning, chris gibson, author of the book rally point come cope rally point come point. Bloomberg alex on theeporter congressional reauthorization of the Childrens Health insurance program. 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