Table of Contents Introduction: Household Health Care Matters Section 1: Information 1. 'The danger is over': News About the Sick 2. Medicines or Remedies: Recipes for Health and Illness Section 2: Resources 3. Early Modern Spending on Health Care 4. Animal, Vegetable and Mineral: Medicinal Ingredients 5. 'For to make the ointment': Kitchen Physick Section 3: Practice 6. Therapeutics in the Family 7. 'I troble noe body with my Complaints': Chronic Disorders Conclusion Appendix of Household Accounts Glossary of Ingredients Bibliography Index
This scholarly text explores cultures of medicine and self-help in 17th-century English households and contains previously undiscovered source material.
Anne Stobart is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK and former Director of Programmes in Complementary Health Sciences and Programme Leader of the BSc in Herbal Medicine at Middlesex University, UK. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Journal of Herbal Medicine and chairs the Herbal History Research Network. Anne writes for the Recipes Hypotheses blog which brings together an international group of scholars writing on the history of recipes. She is a founder of the Holt Wood project on sustainable cultivation and harvest of medicinal trees and shrubs.
Stobart's sources are ... exceptionally well chosen, and the author
makes very good use of the letters, pieces of advice, recipe books,
descriptions of gifts sent and received, prescriptive instruction,
and household accounts that have survived in each family's papers.
* Bulletin of the History of Medicine *
Stobart, a leading scholar in the history of herbal medicine, has
produced an excellent survey of how some early modern households
managed their health on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, she seeks
to question not only the prevailing assumption that self-help was
the primary source of health care, but also what self-help actually
meant in 17th-century England. To address this, the author divides
household medicine into three themes that showcase the richness of
her archival sources, namely, information (letters and recipe
collections), resources (accounts, expense, equipment), and
practice (treatment of children and chronic cases). This allows
Stobart to convincingly argue that household health care was a
complex mixture of therapeutic self-help and commercial and
professional medicine. There was not necessarily a division or
tension between women who made up recipes, apothecaries who
supplied remedies, or physicians who prescribed them. As the
century progressed, however, households purchased more and more
ingredients rather than make up recipes. There was also a sharper
delineation of medicine as not including foods. All of these
conclusions raise the interesting issue of who held power in the
17th century when it came to domestic health care. Summing Up:
Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries. * CHOICE *
A fascinating book and one that will appeal to anyone with an
interest in the history of herbal medicine. * Herbs *
... [A] must-read book. This well-written account, which
effectively combines much sophisticated primary research with
up-to-date historiographical engagement, is involved and elaborate,
and yet at the same time it is easy to follow. I would recommend
this book to undergraduates and graduate students alike, and it
should find a place on many medical history library shelves. *
Pharmacy in History *
The text serves to enhance our knowledge of the strategies employed
by families grappling with illness during the seventeenth century,
and merits readership from scholars and students interested in
early modern medicine. * The English Historical Review *
Anne Stobart offers us an engaging and penetrating analysis of how
households in the sixteenth and seventeenth century dealt with
sickness and ill health. Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century
England is an innovative and rich investigation of how domestic and
commercial medical care were combined to treat diseases in this
period. She reveals in unprecedented detail the rich currents of
information that flowed between individuals and were transferred
between generations. In an exemplary display of historical
scholarship, Stobart brings together a broad array of sources that
allow her to open the doors to the sick rooms and for the first
time show us the range of ways families came together to compound
medicines, share remedies and advice, and seek the help of doctors
and apothecaries. * Patrick Wallis, London School of Economics and
Political Science, UK *
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