An Experiment in Teaching Recipe Transcription
This term, my third-year class on “Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe” was involved in my research: testing the Textual Communities crowd-sourcing transcription platform.* The class has been busy...
View ArticleThe Wonders of Unicorn Horns: Preventions and Cures for Poisoning
In Johanna St. John’s recipe book, the mysterious “Banister’s Powder by Dr Bates” lay nestled between the equally intriguing “Mrs Archers way of makeing My Lady Kents Powder” and the beginning of the...
View ArticleSome “Fishy” Remedies for Madness and Melancholy
By Pamela Deagle Johanna St. John’s recipe book contains many interesting and unusual recipes on the treatment of madness, melancholy, and fits of the mother early modern. These recipes offer clues to...
View ArticleJust who is this Johanna St. John?!?
By Elaine Leong This week I have the honour of giving a talk at Lydiard House and Park near Swindon. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Lydiard House and Park was the country estate of the St....
View ArticleRemedies, Surgery and Domestic Medicine
Editors’ note: This post provides a sneak peek of Seth LeJacq’s fascinating article, “The Bounds of Domestic Healing: Medical Recipes, Storytelling and Surgery in Early Modern England“, which recently...
View ArticleScratching “The Itch Infalable”: Johanna St. John’s Anti-Itch Cure
By Jennifer Sherman Roberts Physical or metaphorical, itches are funny things. Physical itches, as Atul Gawande points out, may well have been a response that evolved to alert us to insects and...
View ArticleThe Long Boil: Recipes for Ale and Beer in late Seventeenth-century England
By Elaine Leong I read Marieke’s recent post on beer as medicine with great interest. Like many of you out there, I’m a lover of all things ale and beer and was cheered both to learn about medicinal...
View ArticleHow to brew beer with a ‘paile of cold water’
By Elaine Leong The sun is shining brightly outside my window and the temperatures are finally (!) getting warm in Berlin. When this happens, Berliners all head out to the parks, terraces and to their...
View ArticleExploring CPP 10A214: Enter Lady Honywood, Continued; Getting it on Paper
By Hillary Nunn with Rebecca Laroche Elaine Leong’s posting about paper’s use as a medical tool inspired me to look more carefully at instances of paper in the Layfield manuscript, which Rebecca...
View ArticlePlacing Historical Recipes in Fiction: The Lady of the Tower
By Elizabeth St.John Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthven being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she (Lucy St.John Apsley) suffered them to make their rare experiments at...
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