University school of medicine talks about the homemade remedies used by 17th century housewives, the partnership of historic boston and the Old North Church cohosted this 15 now i am delighted to introduce the immediate and i think immediate means by a week past president. Of the partnership of the historic boston rose. Who is an old friend. Who will be introducing our speaker for the night. Rose. Good evening. And welcome. To this wonderful program. As most of us all of you know each year the partnership has a themed series of events after september 7. September 7 is the day in which boston and water town were named. And we always commemorate that date. We have this themed series of events each year. This years theme is medicine and mortality. Im here to tell you it is the most successful charter day we have ever had. How many of you have been to other ents this year . Would you raise your hand. Thats what i thought. This wonderful. Excellent. In addition to our fall activities we have lectures, we have Reading Group discussion. And tours from april to november. All volunteer group that cares passionately about telling the forgotten history of boston between 1630 and the revolution. And we do have three more programs coming up. Well reschedule the talk of the old state house by doctor david jones. It will be a wonderful closing to the whole theme. And well have two more tours. Now, we talk a lot about the renaissance man. And we usually really do mean a man. Tonight youll meet a renaissance woman. The depth and breath of what lori lyn price does from science to history is amazing. First her day job. She has a masters degree in statistics from the ohio state university. She has a faculty appointment at the Tufts University school of medicine. A sta tigs. And named coauthor in 130 published medical research papers. Then we have the rest of her life. Which includes work with the partnership of historic boston and she just earned a master of liberal arts in history. From the harvard extension school. Her work focussed on domestic medicine in 17th century england. She is the expert on this area. Shes also a professional historian and speaker. And owns bridging the past. Com. This wonderful site helps to connect people with their ancestors. And she is going to help connect us tonight with 17th century bostonen and how they coped with illness. Me please welcome lori lyn price. Thank you very much for having me here. Im excited to be here. I hope you can hear me im a little bit horse with a cough. Im really excited to be here. This is my passion. Some of you have a chance to go visit the garden. Part of the reason were speaking here is the association with the 18th century garden and if you didnt have a chance to check it out i encourage you to come in spring or summer when its at full glory. When were talking about remedy and domestic medicine. Which would be what the housewife would do. We are they rely on gardens. As i will show you tonight it was not entirely herbal based. They had other things they use as well. Today well go on a tour of what would used in the home. Not necessarily by the housewife. Well talk about her. But what was used in the home in 17th century boston and new england. I will be relying on recipe books. They called them receipt books. In the 16 and 17 hundreds receipt books were all the rage. It was cool to collect recipes from your friends and doctors and from ones that might have the name of the king. Even may or may not come from the king. But if it had his name it it works better that what came from your neighbor. As rose said, my research is mostly in england. It would have been very similar here in new england. So much of what i say will apply to both. Im going to talking about two recipe books in particular. So ill introduce them up front. The charles account book. And although it has a mans name. He maybe wrote two pages. The rest of the 200 or so panls are win by women. Which is probably typical. That it got the mans name although it was written by women. The ones i used for my thesis were collected by a woman in england. Started nd 1650 and died in 1688. Shefs collecting up until she died because a recipe from a book published in 1687. She had about 400 medical recipes. Probably 450. But the book was in poor shape when it was donated. In the 1970s. And so she collected culinary recipes. Which i didnt focus on. Any recipe book would have both the medical and culinary recipes. Many times they would be together. She had them separated. She had the culinary section and stlooexs for medicine. And after she died somehow the book made its way from england over here. And came into the family. Three generations of women added further recipes to the book. And i will get to those. But not today. I did tribe them yet. Transcribe them yet. Thats the one where the bulk of the recipes will come from. Thats the one i know best. The other recipes will come from the Martha Washington cook book. Have you heard of the cook book . You have. Excellent. So this cook book actually was not Martha Washingtons. Sh opened it at some poibt point. But it was likely a family heirloom. Written by women generations earlier. And passed down through the generations and add to them. I should mention both of the books are manuscript. It is not published anywhere. And an edition of the Martha Washington cook book. Lets get into it. Well start with a recipe. I know many of you cannot see the slides. Ill read them and cover them in detail. They will be available on cspan later. This is a recipe from the account book. For the cough physic or kujs. It can mean any respiratory illness. Some of the ingredients are a quantity. Cloves. Cinnamon and the if you find your stomach oppressed with cold raw humor. Take two spoonfuls more before supper. For those of you who know about 17th century medicine. Or been to the talks in the series. You have heard about the humor. But they were the foundation of what people understood in medicine back then. The housewife, her husband the doctor. All of them understood it the same way. This was the foundation of what they believed. There were four elements in the body. And they had in terms of what ill focus on. Hot, cold, wet and dry. So youll hear me talk about hot cold wet and dry. And this is the humor. Every one of us would have the unique combination of what was our ideal balance. It might be different. If we were in for my body if i was in the ideal balance of the four humors i would be healthy. If any of the humors were out of the balance i would be sick. I would have symptoms. Headache, fever. All kibds of things that indicate my humors were out of balance. They didnt believe in this time in distinct illnesses. So its not like i had a specific fever. Or a migraine. I had a symptom of my humor being out of balance. We might have the same symptoms by we would have different treatments. This is called the humoral theory. And so the idea was proposed probably 2 to 300 years before christ. And so its called after him. What could cause an imbalance. It would be a chill. Emotional upset. A poorly die jested meal. The bad smelling air. Unbalanced diet or changes in diet. Well talk about what the diet means. Very different from today. And also a change in activity level. We could much more active or less. That could lead to an imbalance. Sin could lead to an imbalance and illness. And they did understand diseases were contagious. And so they didnt understand the idea of contagious that bugs. Reporter or germs were passed. With the perhaps the same symptoms and perhaps not. So in terms of diet. Today were familiar with my plate. Gov. Which says the ideal balance between fruits and vegetables and grain and meat sdp dairy. Back then is would have looked like this. Hot and cold and wet and dry. It might not be 100 equal proportions. You would want to have elements of each if you were trying to be healthy. You would want to eat meals composed of foods that had a mechanics of hot and cold and wet and dry properties. If you were not in balance. Maybe too many hot humors. You would try to eat the cold foods to get it back in balance. So how do you know what foods had hot and dry and cold and wet properties . Something you learn growing up. Your mother would teach you. And the men would pick it up along the way. And if you didnt know, for some reason for a specific food there were all kind of resources you could go to. For example in new england a common meal might be fish. Its cold and wet. If you were to have fish you would have it with a mustard or onion sauce. Hot and dry. You have your balanced meal. Garlic was thought to be hot and dry. Lamb and cucumbers cold and wet. Beef, bread was cold and dry. There are books telling you about the properties of various foods and they could have varying degrees of heat or cold. The first degree or third degree. Ukt g you could really get into this. Many of you saw the garden out back. Here if 17th century gardens. This is the whipple house. Which is wonderful. You should go if you havent been. This is just part of the garden its about twice as big. I couldnt fit the entire picture on the slide. And when you go there youll notice it its the mint and thyme. They wouldnt have had it marked. They know whats what. Thats to help us. You can see all the stuff theyre growing here. They would have grown both food culinary items. Medicine items which were one in the same. Some were purely culinary or medicine. They might grow thijs that help with dyeing. Material or clothe. Or household purposes. This is strawberry bank. In New Hampshire. They have many different gardens from all different time periods. If you have not been i suggest you go there as well. This is just half of the garden. So now how if i was a woman starting out in my own household i was in charge of taking care of my husband and kids. Hopefully my mother trained me well. I would have had a lot of other resources. One of which is recipe books. This is a book from the library in london. They have a wonderful collection of recipe books. Many of which you can look at for free. Some others you have to purchase. And there are similar collections in the u. S. Not nearly as good. But thats one of my next steps is start collecting some of the books from this time period that made it into the u. S. And might have u. S. Specific recipes and expanding the data base i have. If you were lucky you have a recipe book. In fact with the charles account book, when whoever donated it to the society in the 1970s they put this wonderful note which isnt true. It is a nice thought. That some hannah getting married and going to. 1710. She was going into the wilderness. And so her mother was worried about her and made her this book. Entirely not true. The recipe book was compiled already by 1688. She gave her somehow ended up it could have been her mother gave her the book that had already been compiled and it was passed down. Through the family. And it was added to. You could also not only if you didnt have your own book, making recipe books was all the rage. You could ask friends and family and doctors and midwives and whoever. You could ask them and start your own collection. And a lot of people did that. Also there were published books. This is herbal. How many are familiar with the book . You should become familiar with it. Its a wonderful book. It was published first in the late 15 hundreds and kept in print through the 1600s. He hz some wonderful drawings. The version i have is black and white. Still he has nice drawings of the plants and along with them he has descriptions of where you can find them. What they lack look like. What to use them for. Well look at foxglove. This is a beautiful this is in the garden. You couldnt see it in bloom. One of the gardeners here took the picture. Ill read you what he says. He says foxglove with a purple flower is most common. The leaves are long. Nicked in the edges of light green. It goes on for a couple paragraphs. It talks about where you can find it. Foxglove grow within Barren Grounds and under hedges almost everywhere. This is in england. And they flourish and flower in june and july. And he gives a name in french. That ill attempt. Some call in french. And then the temperature. So the hot and dry properties. He says the foxglove they are bitter are hot and dry. With the certain kind of cleansing quality joined there with. Yet they are fo use. They have no place among medicine. This was in the 1500s. It was not until the 1700s people realized foxglove was useful to treating cardiac problems. Also cull pepper. He was another famous person in the time. Published around 1650. This was two of his books together. Complete herbal and eveningish physician. Efs one of a growing number of people who thought that knowledge should not be held in the hands of the tiny few trained physicians but given to everyone. Which is really good we have all of this in terms of the a short example that most of them are quite detailed. Someone who wanted to know more could dig into this. Most of the knowledge was not new. He provided more detail and really thought it was important to get out to the lay people. Actually in the 1650s there was a huge explosion and really explosion is the only word to describe it of publications. It should be spread out. On the other hand most of the people already knew it as well. So theres a little trade off. So well read about the bouncing bet. The soap wort. And again he is very detailed. His book is that thick. Really small double column. He wants to get as much as information as he can to you. The description is quite long. The roots creep under ground. With many joints. Of a brown color on the outside and yellow within. And it goes on. It says in the place it grows wild in low and wet grounds of the land. By brooks and running water. Flowers in july and all august and september. Before they be quite spent. In terms of the government and v virtue. He was governed by astrology. So he talks about which sign it is under. And then the virtue are what it treats. So he says venus owns it. The country people use to brew the leaf and lay it to the fingers, hands or legs when they are cut. To heal them again. Some make great it is provoke union urine. And it good to avoid waters. And no less to perform an absolute cure for the pox or syphilis. So he does say the country people use it for cuts. Other people say its good for provoking urine. Which well talk about. And then he has no idea if its good for the french pox or now. He puts it in there and you can judge. This is the government and virtue is really short. Most of what he has is longer. And then there were books such as this. The english housewife published in 1615. And this was again in print throughout the 1600s. This was written by a man again. To the woman. Telling the woman the housewife all of the virtues or characteristics. One of which fts in medicine. He says it is me she has a physical or medicine knowledge. How to administer many wholesome receipts. So one of the many characteristics is shes supposed to know about medicine. Enough to prevent illness. And take care of it. He goes on later she shouldnt know too much. Because too much is what the physician should know. Theres a fine line. How much she can know and shouldnt know. Part of explosion of literature related to medicine in the 1650s is hannah woolly. She wrote several books. This is one. She didnt focus on medicine. This again is kind of like the book more of the various qualities and characteristics a woman should develop. One is medicine. She includes recipes. So you might ask, how did they make medicine in the time period . By about 1720 there were 15 in boston. Im not sure when they started. We do know in 1630 when john win thop came over. Someone called himself. Whether he brought anything we dont know. Sometime by 1700s there were starting to be apoth carries. You could go and by premade medicine. As im going to show you. It takes a long time to make medicine. They would have things you might not be able to grow. So most or you wouldnt have the ingredient to make. Well talk about those. I had the experience to learn bha it was like to make medicine in the 1600s. I went down for a workshop and there were two of us. We were asked we were given a shoet of ten pages with 20 to 30 botanicals on it. Heres the picture. Heres what they are called and what they do. In order to make a medicine like they would have had to do, we had to decide what do we want to treat. We decided we wanted our medicine to treat muscle and joint pain. And also treat inflammation. Once she and i decided on that, we then picked from the list about eight plants. We picked st. John wart. Marshmallow. Rose mary. And we went out into the garden. And this is a picture of me picking from the garden. The plymouth plantation. And none grew in one. We had to go to several. If you have your whole plant. We wont take the whole plant. Sometimes they need the root. But you would take this stem. And cut the stem. We would have the stem the leaf and the flower. The seeds. Anything else that might be on the stem. We would take. We had to get a lot of it. We filled two big baskets. We took them back to the workshop and cut them into piece of a quarter of your palm. Because we want them small enough that we can draw out the essences. When youre making medicine with herbal you want to dry out the medicinal property. So we cut them up. Small enough we could get as much as possible. And then we put it in to a pot with oil. And we left. It took about two hours. There was an intern there. She watched. And this is the 21st century. It would have taken much longer to do this over a fire. What we wanted to do was let the plants do all of the oil could soak up the essence or virtue. And once that was done we no longer needed the plant. We strained it. Took the oil. And added beeswax. Melted it and made about 20 jars of this big. 15 to 20 jars. If you were a housewife and only wanted to make one or two. You have to decide what proportion you need. We made a lot. We were told it last td about a year. I tried it it did work. And back then they didnt often think in terms of expiration date. So they probably would have kept it for much longer. As long as it seemed to work. I was up in New Hampshire they were having an 18th century medicine day. I spent a long time talking with a midwife. And she had a wonderful collection of thins she might have. Fresh herbs from the garden. Plants and dried herbs. She had bottles and bottles of dried and powder plants. And i asked her how would they know when it was no longer use it. Once it didnt seem to work. So there are a few recipes that do give expiration dates. Most dont. I asked her you have quite the collection. I know you are a midwife. Whats the average woman have. She said they would have a lot of the stuff. Not all. And it would depend on woman to woman. Like we might have favorite spices for cooking. They would have favorite herbs for their medicine. It differs from various households. And have as much as they needed. The other types are teas. Thats something where you use fresh fresh or dry. They would infuse things. I have a friend who loves to drink fruit infused water. They would steep things. Had a lot of ways they could do that. And going back to plymouth plantation when we were waiting for the plants in the oil to stew, went back out and stalked and saw more plants and talked with one of the workers who knows a lot about medicine. And happened to have been bitten by wasp. She went to a plant. Picked it up and rubbed it on loik this. And felt better immediately. They would use it fresh just like that. In terms of the ointments they would store in containers like this. On the bottom right. And cover it with either paper or cloth. They may not have had room to store things. They would have to think carefully about what medications if they needed to store. What types of medicines were made . This is from my thesis. This isnt published. It was part of the research. Of the 400 recipes. And she herself divided into three sections. And she didnt label them. But she did have a different numbering system. About 25 were what i call external medication. 32 waters. And 43 internal or something you would ingest. In terms of internal i went and looked this morning, what types of medications there were. It was broth and lots of liquid. Powder, enema. Paste, peels and syrup. In terms of the external. It was a bath, ear and eye drops. They did have drops. And external applications such as they would have liquid and ointments. And then the waters. The most interesting. The most i think the most important. The basis for many things. So waters are as you would anything liquid. So anything that you make you might put herbs and strain and keep the water. Thats a waters. Or even if you it might be alcohol. Many are herbal wines. Or alcoholic drinks. And these were used for three purposes. One is they could be medication by themselves. For example rose water. You make it by taking roses and distill them or infuse them. To come up with a water. Then you can use that yourself. You can use it as an ingredient in other medications. Or you can use it as a vehicle. Some were powder. And in order to get a powder ingested its done if you drink it with a liquid. So the water is used for those purposes. I want to see what were the most common botanicals in the 400 recipes. These ten come from about 400 recipes. They showed up in at least 20. Cinnamon, ginger, lick rich, mace, nutmeg, raise sin, rose mary, rue, saffron and. They are for everything. Nothing stuck out for any one of them. They were used usually many of the recipe call for five to 20 ingredients. And notice cinnamon, ginger, mason and nutmeg are spices. They would have been expensive and thought to be potent. They also one of the ore things they have between 5, 20, 30 ingredients. They would use what they had. If they didnt have 20 they would use the ten or 15 they had. They would experience experiment themselves. At least in this book what some of the common botanicals are. Other books would be a different mix. People chose recipes they like. Lets talk about the diseases they. This is smallpox. This is a little girl who is suffering from smallpox. In the 1970s. And london in the 1600s this was a disease. It was like chickenpox. It was always around and it was a childhood disease. Of course it was lethal than chickenpox. If you survived childhood in london you were now immune. In boston it was a different story. There were not enough people to sustain it to be indemic. So you might be 20 or 30 years between smallpox out breaks and so anyone born in the time period children to the 30 yearold adult would be exposed and would loikly die. So smallpox was probably one of the scaryiest things to hit new england. They never knew when it was going to hit. And had a 20 mortality rate. Some of the worst out breaks were the late 16 hundreds. And 1721. A really unique out break. Because Cotton Mather had heard about this thing called inoculation. Where you take someone who is sick. They have the puss filled things you break. You take and get the puss and put it on me. Because im healthy. But i want to be inoculated. Now i have smallpox. The idea is i would still get it. It would be a much milder case. And there was a lot of contention it was a controversial. Only one of the physicians went along with mather. Most were against it. Many of the newspapers were against it. What happened is the people who were inoculated a few died. Most survived. The mortality rate was significantly smaller than those who were not inoculated. It was seen as a success. But remained controversy. George washington mandated after the out break that his troops be inoculated. It was done and it was 1796 came out with the vaccination for it. There were all the other epidemics include measle. Really what would kill people would be the common the out breaks would be bad. But they happened 20 to 30 years. The every day stuff killed people. One of the things was fluxes. Coming out of your body that you dont want coming ou. Diarrhea. And so this is a recipe. Who lived in new england in massachusetts. In the 1750s. And michelle wrote a book called one colonial womans world and included this recipe book. This is for all sort of fluxes. Two quarts of new millk. New nutmeg. 16 pepper corn. And you would know what to do with this. A housewife back then would know how to mix them together. There was a lot of assumptions made that you already knew how to do it. And so then when you do whatever yo do with it. Give it four times. The first time as hot as you can drink it. The next time not so hot. 4 in the morning. 4 in the afternoon and at night. Another thing they had issues with was digestion. This is spirit of mint. It meant oil. We can think of it similar to essential oil. And this is from Martha Washington 67 washington. Help with the stomach and drink. Comforts the spirits and preserves from the important part. Expel wind and helps. Digestion. They understood it in a different way than we did. Than we do. Decobs they thought the stuck was an oven. The food was cook. If it cooked well it would continue to go through and you would have digestion. If not it would stay in your stomach and pew trify. This is spirit of manuscript in supposed to help that. Everybody had worms back then. And he found evidence in the privy of worms. Everyone had it. Kids and adults. Rich and poor. This is for children. It says take roach and milk. Boil them together until they come to a curd. Let the child eat and drink the milk. It will destroy the worms in the jaw or mouth. There were this is specifically for children. There are also recipes for other parts of body. To get rid of worms. There are womans issues. I am specifically not talking about childbirth. Because thats not something that would be done in the home. You would call in a midwife to help with childbirth issues. But they had to take care of themselves and take care of the women had to take care of issues. One could be you were not having your period. Its a really bad thing if you are not pregnant and not breastfeeding. The reason why is like the food that doesnt cook in your stomach. Can cause bad humors. Men straul blood can do the same. In your womb. It will stay and its poisonous to begin with. It causes problems. You do not want to have your period if you were a woman of that age. If you were pregnant, it was okay. Because that blood was not staying in the womb was but feeding the fetus. It was okay if you were breastfeeding because it was transformed into the breast milk. Its not staying in your system. But if you were not pregnant or breastfeeding and not having your period, bad stuff. So cleansing your womb was important. This is a recipe. And all of the things in red are known in the min gogs. They are madder root. Ju juniper berry. Drink a pint daily. Until they come. They being the period. And then you add saffron and drink. She spent time with this recipe. And she decided it probably was not for a abortion. These are things that can cause abortion. That we know today. A min gog means something we know today can start the blood the period again. So used today for women again who are having menstrual problems. I want to get my period going again. Im not trying to abort a child. Hour a couple of recipes that are questionable. That may have been used as code word. They dont say abortion. That really falls under the talk of a midwife. I do know the they knew about womens issues and many of the recipes deal with menstrual and vaginal disorder. And then i like this because i have a cough. And i like the idea that knew how to make cough drops back then. This is how to make an excellent pellet. Juice of licorice. Sugar candy. And still quite valuable today for perfume. Oil of, gum dragon. And red rose water. You get it to a paste and roll it into rolls and cut it into pellets. Lie in your mouth and dissolve. Good for a cough of the lungs. They had cough drops which i thought was cool. I wouldnt have thought of that. This is a recipe from the hannah woolly book. Its a remedy for the drop si. Accumulation of fluid in the body. Whether hot or cold. Notice this is hot or cold. Meaning it it could be caused by too many hot humors or cold humors. Either way it should work. Tops of red mint. Ark angel. Blind nettle and red sage. A small quantity of each. Put them and mix them up. And strain the juice into stale ail. As much as will stir to drink morning and evening. For ten days together. And it will good willing cure. I looked at the east ka si statements. How well does it work. Its not that common to say it will effect the cure. Thats not what you were hoping to do. You werent expecting to be cured very often. If a recipe says it will effect the cure. Thats a pretty strong statement. And she gives herself a wiggle room saying god willing it will affect the cure. So now were going to move into what was effective medication. Well, if you were sick you had too many of one humor. Maybe two. You had an imbalance. You want to get the humors out. And you want to get them out by whatever means possible. Vomit. Diarrhea. Provoking the urine. Sweat. Often put them in bed by the fire and let them sweat. They would do cupping. All the red spots. But you would put a cup heated cup on the skin. And it would bring the blood to the surface. Youre getting stuff out. And also often they would blister. And make a biser so there would be puss. Again getting stuff out. The better the medicine worked the more stuff got out. It was not to made to make you feel better. Really medicine worked that got stuff out. And hopefully the idea was eventually you would feel better. It would get rid of the extra stuff. And get back in balance. This is a picture of somebody blood letting. Many of the purges i discussed not the cupping and blistering. You would call in a proosfessiol for that. There were herbal things that help. And so blood letting was a popular way of getting rid of excess humors. And this would require a physician or somebody who was trained in it. And depending on how ill you were. And the illness the symptoms you had. What time of the year it was. They would from your head, ear, leg, foot. All kinds of things went into how much to bleed and where to bleed you from. It was not done in children. It was thought to be dangerous. That had blistering and cupping and other purging for kids. And it could sometimes go awry. Theres been research into death of george washington. And 1799 in december he came down with a throat distemper. A throat illness. It could have been sore throat. We dont know. He wanted to be heavily bled. He asked for that. And so a rernler looked at the notes of the various physicians over the next 24 hours. Estimated they took 3. 75 liters of his blood in 24 hours. And he died. Because that was half of the blood in his body. So it happens occasionally. Usually they are much more cautious and reasonable. Sometimes it can go awry. So heres an example of purge for the prevention of the gout. And the cure if r it. Cure which is strong. As much as as a large nutmeg and warm small bare. I dont know if its upward or downward purging. And keep to your chambers and not see people. Four times in the year. Twice in the spring twice in the fall. And that would be for prevention and if you have it again, youre going to take it again. For cure that youre having of gout. Gout was fairly common back then. Especially in men. We move into magic. They wouldnt have called it magic. Or thought as we thought today. It would have been another completely reasonable thing that they could use that was completely consistent with their religious believes. We today would call it magic. So the beezer stone. How many of you are harry potter fans . How many know what this is . She remembers the scene. Do you remember what it was for . Hairballs. What i remember. What i remember is poison. Ron was poisoned. What they are. What they were used for. Ron was poisoned. Harry remembered and just learned about this stone. It was an antidote to poison. And got it. And ron survived. So what they actually are, at least in in time period. Referred to as stones that come from the gut of the goat. And they are thought to have to be against poison. They also were thought to be against other things. And this is one of the example of many things where you take objects. Or you take plants or minerals. Stones, that have extra for whatever reason they have extra power and extra strong power. Sdp youll have stronger medicine. This is an example from Martha Washington. And this is where she uses three waters. She doesnt say how we get the water. I assume you take the stone and put it in water or liquid. Perhaps alcohol. Do your distilling and whatever youll do. And you have the beezer water. You take the water and it is an excellent approved antidote against the plague. The purples. Which is a skin disorder. Smallpox and measles. For prevention take two spoon fills. This is to prevent these things and because you were using the water its stronger and a good antidoit. This one that i believe has ritualistic things. Im trying to figure them out. This is found in many, many recipe books. It was a common recipe. Its called a most approved waert for a consumption or respiratory illness. And called cock water. This is the part i think is ritual. Cut him in quarters and break the bones. I dont know why you would do that. Except there might be magical or ritual in that. And add several herbs, currants and raise sins and other things. And three more magical items. Puddle of red milk of a new cow. Prepared pearl. The new milk of a red cow i see fairly often. If youll talk about milk from a cow its a red cow. And i dont know if theres something magical or ewe noek. When i gave this talk a couple months ago someone suggested that it could have to do with the fat content of the milk. Whether they knew about fat content back then or knew this type of milk worked well. That could be a possibility. Leaf gold. They put it in, and again this would be the very wealthy. And then prepared pearl. Or the pearls that you wear around your neck. These are the sorts of things you might get from an apothecary. Included things like unicorn horn. Which of course we know doesnt exist. Thats an example of fraud. And then money. Munia. Which is money from egypt. Whether or not thats actually whether or not you got that is questionable. It was thought to have properties as well. So it wasnt the money itself it was the wrappings and resin thought to have the magical property. And transference. You transfer your illness to an animal or object. In this case an animal. This is secure plague or pestilence. If you have a swelling under the ear, armpit or groin. Draw them forth sdp break them with all speed. Pull off the feather from off the tails of living pigeon or chicken. And hold them hard to the botch or swelling and keep them at part until they die. Youre going to break the boil thats here. Take one of the birds, pull off the tail feathers. Probably something magical there. And take the bird by the bill and hold it here. Until he dies. And the thought is then that once he dies, he has died from the plague. Not the trama of being held like this. He died from the plague. So therefore he now you are free of the plague because you transferred it to the bird. And then sympathetic magic. Is using things that look alike to to do something. For example, for the account book for prevent a womans miscarrying with child. It says use blood red silk. Doesnt exactly say what to do. I brought this up when with the herbalist. The doctor i went and saw. Hes like of course thats sympathetic magic. Silk is shiny and red is string. Its representing the blood. He suggested they tie it in a knot. The silk. And that means you were tieing off the blood flow. So the child cannot come out. Baz you tied it off with the silk. Another example part of the same recipe. Is to take a broth made of cows feet or knuckles or veal or any knitting. The properties. And thought to be like this. If youre taking this broth you are knitting together the womb. And the child cannot come out. Thats example of thetic magic. Sympathetic magic. And it doesnt want to go. Okay. Astrology. So astrology was at its at the in england in the mid1600sment most popular and seen as a science. And if you really got into it you would look if i was ill and go to my astrologist or physician. Whoever practiced. Ask they would find out what sign i was born under. What sign i was when i contracted the illness. And when my symptoms started and what symptoms they are. And decide based on that information what unique treatment i need. Whether that probably was not all that common. It took a lot of knowledge to do that. What was common was to find out when was the best time under the astrology sign to plant herbs. And other plants. To harvest them when they had the most potency. Thats in almanacs. Because of the medical astrology the sections they had. And when people wanted to get rid of them, when the publisher said this is a bunch of. People were like no way. We need this. That persisted for quite sometime. And heres an example to make a powder. Gas cone powder. Another recipe seen all over the place. Take the claws of crabs when the sign is in cancer. June 22 to july 22. Add two ounces. You make it into a powder. This is fwood against smallpox, measles sp fever. So claws of crabs can be the animal. There is a plant called that. Its unclear whether they are referring to the plant or animal. Whether its a plant or animal you want to take when its in cancer. Thats when you get the most potency of the medication. So up until now we have talked about medicine. Magic. And talk about astrology. People take everything that they like just like today. We have western medicine. We have alternative medicine. Many people like me who believe strongly in western medication. Some things that no matter what it is i had not take. I will only rely on western medication. Headaches i might want to try an essential oil or something. Before aspirin. And so people back then did the same thing. They would take the things that made sense to them. Use those. And might have a favorite pes recipe and remedy. This became popular in the 1600s. One more thing from which they could draw. Remember there were two main differences. There were no distinct diseases. If people have similar symptoms its not because they had the same disease. You happened to have the same symptoms because you were imbalanced. They relied on botanical medicine. It relied heavily on botanical medication. This said there are distinctive diseases. Headaches with need to use the same treatment. Its the same source. And also they really liked using chemical drugs. Led, sulfur and mercury. It became stronger and stronger. Until i was surprised when i was researching who fought in the Mexican American war in the 1840s. That a lot of the men in the were complaining about the treatments. Which were sulfur and mercury. And i was like was he really trying to kill them. Was he trying to kill them. No. That was actually the Gold Standard of medicine in 1840s in the army. Was heroic medicine. This chemical medicine. It persisted for quite sometime. It had a whole religious theology with it. Which im not that familiar with. Because of that is became popular with puritan physicians. They like the religious aspect. One of the other things that is reintroduced. It had been lost or had become not as popular. It was brought back. Was the doctrine of similars. Or signatures. Its like sympathetic magic. Like treats like. Why low saffron is good nor jaundice. Kidney beans treat the kidney. Red plants are good for heart disease. And hair like ferns good for baldness. And many more. All kind of things they thought treated like this. Religion. So there could be a spiritual cause to your symptoms. It didnt god could again if youre thinking. He would cause your humors to go out of balance. Because it was a punishment from him. You werent doing what you were supposed to be doing. And how they determined whether something was a spiritual cause vs. The other causes. The chill or bad air. Im not sure how they knew. But somehow they did. Ffs it was a spiritual cause. You need to repent and fast and make yourself good with god. The minister could help you repent and fast. So in everyone though some of the. This again would be all the things the housewife and her family would keep in mind. All of the things we have talked about. And the only things they would go outside of the house for they might go to the apothecary. Or for things like money. They might go to the minister. If theres a spiritual cause. And for blood letting or cupping and blistering. They go to a physician. For the most part they knew these were possibilities and decide on their own what they should do based on the situation. And then people always ask about native american medicine. And can did that use native mesh medicine. The answer is yes. Eventually. Not right away. There were two conflicting thoughts. One that english herbs are best for english bodies. We have used these for centuries and we know they are good for evening lir bodies. And even though we have moved to this new place. Were englishmen and women. So the herbs are still best. So that was the tie to england to keep using this stuff they had been using for centuries. There was a popular thought. Is that where ever you were there were diseases specific to that place. And god would put the things that you needed to troet the diseases in that place. That pl. This is from what climate so ever is subject to a particular disease in the same place there grows a cure. So they were no longer in england. They were knew in new england. New place, potentially new diseases or new symptoms. And they should be using whats there. So where better to learn from that than the native americans who had been there and had been using things for centuries . In the end again it depended on the person. Some people were more likely to take them than others but it was one more thing they could draw from. And so ive talked mostly about the housewife. I want to talk about other members of the household and what they would do. Young children, especially young women, if someone was sick there would need to be a watch. Someone watching them all the of the time. That usually fell to the young women, sometimes the children. And men would be involved, and they would be involved mostly well, some of them would help make medications. Some of them would help with the nursing although that was rare. At least in england. Im basing it on english research. Im not 100 sure about new england. But one of the things men did in england and new england was they would write letters. One of the things that was quite popular is again writing, saying my wife is really sick. And so im going to write you the physician or you my motherinlaw, what is your favorite recipe to combat the symptoms she has. They were very involved in that aspect. That is all i have. So now were open for questions. And remember, if you have a question just stand up and then theyll come to you with the boom mike. [ applause ] so were there any questions . Okay. Im just wondering how soon it was when you had all of those imported things like the mace and the nutmeg. Did those come in in the early 17th century or was it later . Are you able to somebody cant hear. Okay. Her question is about all of the imported things such as the mace and the nutmeg, were they here early on or did they come later. The answer is i am not sure. My guess is they would be later. There is a at least to my knowledge theres a dearth of research about when things were available here in new england. I know a lot about things available in england. And knowing they were available in england they could have come over. They would not be coming over in 1620 and 1630 because you needed food. You needed clothes to survive. So when did they come . My guess would be the latest 1600s. But i am not sure and thats something when i start looking at the cookbooks and other records from the 1600s in new england im hoping to really learn some of those things because theres not a lot out there as far as i know. So certainly the gold leaf, the pearls, et cetera, are as you pointed out very expensive. Im wondering if you can talk a little bit about social status and people who essentially were elite, had wealth, versus who didnt. And did they see the recipes as additives in their or additive rather than cumulative, that you could use whatever things you whatever of the list of ingredients you wanted to, if you wanted to make it a little bit better and more intense you added maybe some of the more exotic ingredients. But im intrigued by the social status of people. Certainly the women are literate and some of these are expensive recipes. Okay. So the question was i think there were maybe two questions there. The first question is to talk about the social status. Some of the things i mentioned, the leaf gold, the pearls, are very, very expensive. Whos going to be using those. Second question is whether they were additive or cumulative. So did you need to have everything, is that right . Did you sneed to have everything or could you have something . One of the things i should have mentioned is the reece p e books we have by and large come from wealthy people because theyre the ones that were literate and could write things down. So we do not know we know that the 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 and never written down. So there is certain a bias in the recipe books that we have toward wealthy people. Having said that, whether it was cumulative or additive is that people would use what they had. So even if your recipe called for gold leaf or pearl, if you didnt have it or you couldnt afford it, you would use the other stuff you did have. You would just use what you had. And people in this period were very especially in england were really interested in experimentation. So science and what they call philosophy, what we would call science today, was becoming very popular. And there were all of these journal there were these journals and societies and various things. And what the people could do in the household is they could take the medication or the medicine they got from someone and experiment. And see if they left this thing out did it make it better or did it make it worse. So there was some experimentation, but mostly they used what they had. Over here. Hi. My question sort of centered around the one slide that you had that had the various amenagogs that were in red that had been studied. Do you have any expansion on that in terms of like the older remedies or Home Remedies that now have modern research thats back to like maybe a potential benefit . I think one of the things that i can so her question was about, excuse me, the amenagogs and the abortofacients and what do we know that they used back then. Is that right . So what first got me interested in medicine in general well, i worked as a statistician, so i was always interested. I worked in bio stats. But in terms of my history class, one of the classes that i took was a World History class. I was trying to find a paper that i liked and i ended up coming up with two books that were published in the medieval period. So going back to your question about social status, these would have had re, very limited access. And i looked at whether the and i looked at two things. I looked at womens disorders. Mostly dealing with menstrual disorders. And then i looked at superstitions. Im sorry, i looked at child birth. Which one worked according to our definitions today and which ones were superstition. I found that by and lafrnlg the medical not the child birth but the other stuff, the menstrual disorders, they knew what they were doing. A lot of that has been proved today. They knew what they were doing. They also knew that they could caused abortions with these and some people would use that to cause abortions. Back then abortion was not illegal until you felt the child quicken which was around four or five months. When you felt the child moving inside you abortion became illegal. Up until then you could argue i didnt know i was pregnant. And even when you felt the baby move you might know you were pregnant but no one else could probably tell at that point. So they would some people would use them for abortion. Many people either did not know they were pregnant or didnt care. They werent necessarily trying to cause a abortion but they were trying to get menstrual blood flowing again. But by and large they worked pretty well. A lot of them are not used today for that purpose, because they work really well in causing an abortion. They also work well as an amenogog. Thank you very much. This was very informative. But one of the things that resonates for me. When you were talking about common botanicals. Things like cinnamon and ginger have current application for their healing properties. So many times a lot of that stuff did work. And thats why the strength of that legacy came down. And now theres western science to kind of legitimize it. So some of those common botanicals are the list of some of the super foods or medicinal foods. Exactly. So her comment was more of a comment than a question. That when i listed the common botanicals that were found that many of them such as cinnamon have proven benefits today. I would agree with you that they may not have done exactly what they did back then but they had a good idea that even if they had a lot of ingredients and two or three worked they might not have known which two or three. But there was a lot of stuff they did back then thats been proven to work because they thought it worked. Okay. Right here. Shes been standing up for a while. The lady standing up. This is the other end of the question about expensive ingredients. What is roach allen . I googled that. Its not expensive, i dont think. I was trying to figure out what it was and i could not find a good answer. Its used today. If you think of baking powder, you want to get the kind without alum in it. So its basically some sort of crystalline and maybe the physicians in here know. Google did not serve me well to figure out what it was. Some sort of crystalline thing they could use. So it was not a plant. It was some sort of mineral or crystal. Do you have any idea . Sid . No. Its something people can still get today. [ inaudible ]. Sno, its a mineral. Its a mineral or rock or crystal. Its not insectbased. Okay. I have a comment and a question. My comment was you had mentioned astrology or just seasonal like watching the signs or whatever, choosing to harvest an herb at a specific time. And i guess my comment there would be that the plants, the flower, they bloom or they go to seed at different times and they would have different properties. Which i think i find interesting. Like at a time when maybe they had a lot of time to observe nature and observe their gardens in that space. And then maybe if you could speak to that. And then my other question was what are you doing for your cough and your sore throat . You take those cough drops that i just said. One of her questions is what do you do for a cough or sore throat. I do have several recipes. Id have to look back and see what they call for. One i showed you is they have several things you could use as cough drops. Her first question, and this is going to have to be the final question, is to falk a little more about how they knew when the astrology when you should plant something and when you should harvest it, especially thinking that if you were harvesting something for its seed rather than for its leaves, rather than for its flowers, that you might want to harvest it at different times. This was developed over centuries. So they knew when they learned when the best time was to harvest things. Were they always right . Probably not. But were they right a lot . Probably. So yeah, they did i mean, they spent a lot this is what they did to survive. This is not the only thing they did. But making medicine in the home was something they had to know pretty well. I will stick around if there are any further questions but we cant take any more questions now. And thank you very much. [ applause ] thanksgiving day on cspan. Here are some of the highlights. At 11 30 a. M. Eastern the Liberty Medal ceremony honoring senator john mccain at the National Constitution center in philadelphia. At 1 00 p. M. Former secretary of state john kerry receiving a Lifetime Achievement award at the edward m. Kennedy institute in boston. And at 2 45 p. M. New york times columnist david brooks and historian ronald white discuss character and the presidency. On book tv on cspan 2 the southern festival of books in nashville. At 2 30 p. M. Eastern jonathan eig on the former heavyweight champion of the world, muhammad ali. At 3 10 p. M. Authors discuss the middle class and politics. And at 4 50 p. M. Eric ericsson on his book before you wake life lessons from a father to his children. On American History tv on cspan 3 at 9 50 a. M. Eastern on the presidency the life and times of teddy roosevelt. At 11 00 a. M. On lectures in history, native americans and trade in 19th century california. Then at 2 55 00 p. M. Eastern from the National Archives a look at the first Motion Picture units world war ii films. Thanksgiving day on the cspan networks. Congress is on break for the thanksgiving holiday. When members return next monday, the house will work on 2018 federal spending and raising the debt limit. Current funding expires decbe