Kill or Cure

Sometimes medieval medicines make sense, and show a good knowledge of herbs and their healing properties. But when they go bad, they really, really go wrong. Here are a few of my favorites from "The Good Housewife's Jewel", written in 1596 by Thomas Dawson:

"A SOVEREIGN OINTMENT FOR SHRUNKEN SINEWS AND ACHES
Take eight swallows ready to fly out of the nest. Drive away the breeders when you take them out, and let them not touch the earth. Stamp them until the feathers cannot be percieved in a stone mortar. Put to it lavender cotton, of the strings of strawberries, the tops of mother thyme, the tops of rosemary, of each a handful. Take all their weight of May butter, and a quart more. Then make it up in bales and put it into an earthen pot for eight days close stopped, that no air take them. Take it out, and on as soft a fire as maybe, seethe it so that it do but simmer. Then strain it and reserve it to your use"

"FOR SINEWS THAT BE BROKEN IN TWO
Take worms while they be nice, and look that they depart not. Stamp them, and lay it to the sore, and it will knit the sinew that be broken in two"

"A GOOD OINTMENT FOR SCABS; AND FOR ITCHING OF THE BODY
Take four ounces of oil de baye, and an ounce of frankincense, and two ounces of white whey, three ounces of swine's grease, and an ounce of quick silver that must be slaked with falling spittle, an ounce of great salt, as much of one as of the other. Of all these make an ointment [...]"

"A POWDER PEERLESS FOR WOUNDS
take orpiment [arsenic] and verdigris, of each an ounce, of vitriol burned till it be red, two ounces, bray each of them by it self in a brazen mortar, as small as flour. then mingle them altogether that they appear as one. Keep it in bags of leather, well bound, for it will last seven years with one virtue [...]"

I shouldn't have to say this, but don't try this at home!

Source: Dawson, Thomas. "The Good Housewife's Jewel (with an introduction by Maggie Black)". East Sussex: Southover Press. 2002.