By I have recently been reading volume 2 of the journal of Dr Richard Wilkes, a doctor working in Staffordshire in the eighteenth century. His observations, collected together into these volumes by his descendants, are a real treat containing observations about what has been reported in the news, the weather and the medical cases
Plague Riddled Pigeons
Nearly all of us have grown up hearing about the horrors of the plague. It is common knowledge that, as one early modern pamphlet recorded, ‘The surest token of all to know the infected of the plague, is, if there doe arise and engender botches behind the eares, or under the
By Puppy Water, Beauty’s Help
A guest post by Dr Katherine Aske The beauty products of the early-modern woman were a little different to the ones we know today, and in fact, some of them had far more ‘dog’ in than should be socially acceptable. Eighteenth-century clergyman and poet, Jonathan Swift’s poem ‘The Lady’s Dressing
Comforting Chocolate
In a previous post we explored the controversy that surrounded the consumption of coffee, did it dry and shrivel up male virility or did it augment and strengthen sexual prowess? Coffee was not, though, the only drink discussed and described in early modern England. In the mid-seventeenth century chocolate was
A dose of witchcraft
Coming down with a dose of Witchcraft -– a Halloween special Witches were a real presence in early modern lives. Many elderly women healers, as well as a range of other people, risked accusations of witchcraft. Indeed new midwives, for example, had to swear an oath that they would not