Bloomsbury Academic Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England

About the Author 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. Product Description How did 17th-century families in England perceive their health care needs? What household resources were available for medical self-help? To what extent did households make up remedies based on medicinal recipes? Drawing on previously unpublished household papers ranging from recipes to accounts and letters, this original account shows how health and illness were managed on a day-to-day basis in a variety of 17th-century households. It reveals the extent of self-help used by families, explores their favourite remedies and analyses differences in approaches to medical matters. Anne Stobart illuminates cultures of health care amongst women and men, showing how 'kitchin physick' related to the business of medicine, which became increasingly commercial and professional in the 18th century. Review "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"... [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"Stobart (Univ. of Exeter, UK), 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