Maladies and Medicine by Sara Read Jennifer Evans & Sara Read

Author:Sara Read,Jennifer Evans & Sara Read
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2017-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Goat’s Dung and Child’s Urine

Rather than letting blood, most commonly healers recommended pills, drinks and evacuating medicines designed to purge the body of these superfluous watery humours, or ‘discutient’ medicines – ones that dispersed wind from the body. One early eighteenth-century medical text recommended the roots of flower-de-luce and elaterium (the juice of a wild cucumber). Michael Ettmüller, a professor of botany and anatomy and eminent physician in Leipzig, the author of these recommendations, cautioned that care had to be taken to moderate the effects of these purges, because taking them too frequently could result in the body’s ‘laudable humours’ being melted down and expelled with potentially damaging results. However, as with much medical advice in early modernity, others argued the contrary. John Locke recorded that only ‘plentiful and repeated purging’ would work as ‘small ones only increase the disease’. Figuring out the appropriate level of purging in the midst of contrary advice was perhaps a precarious practice.

John Hall tended to be a conservative practitioner and used herbal cures over more invasive procedures wherever possible. So when Captain Francis Bassett saw the doctor for dropsy, which caused swollen feet, he treated the 50-year-old with emetic and laxative drugs. These gave ‘seven vomits and three stools.’ The next day, after more pills, Bassett had ‘seven Stools and the next day one Pill gave five Stools, and with happy event, for thereby he could both better walk and breathe.’ To maintain the recovery, Hall gave him a ‘sweating Potion’, which ‘perfectly cured him.’ Hall had evidently found the correct balance of purges.

Another of John Hall’s patients needed repeated purges to cure her of a dropsy she developed after the birth of her third child. He treated Mrs Fiennes, who had a postnatal fever the third day after the delivery, with cooling cordials, but Hall felt this had been too much since she developed a swollen right thigh and leg. Her midwife had attempted a cure by applying a plaster of red lead and pressing it on very firmly, but when this didn’t work she called in the doctor. Initially, Mrs Fiennes responded to Hall’s purges, but after a couple of days described to him that she had felt like she was suffocating with phlegm in the night, much like the drowning sensation described by others. Her recovery was slow, but after a few days she was able to walk about with the aid of a ‘staff ’. Hall prescribed ten different treatments altogether, the last of which, to maintain the recovery, was a clyster given twice a week and was made from a child’s urine as the principle ingredient. Eventually, she was ‘restored to her former health.’

Away from the medics, purges were the remedy of choice in manuscript recipe collections as well. A book attributed to Mary Chantrell included ‘an excellent remedy for the timpany or dropsy’, made from five pints of Rhenish wine mixed with ashes made from broom (the plant genisteae, rather than the sweeping implement). Bridget Hydes’s recipe book

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