By A short while ago Sara and I headed to the 1620s house at Donington le Heath to whip up a seventeenth-century mice pie recipe, and accompanying pottage. We have blogged about mince pies before and the ways in which they became controversial in the eighteenth century, but this was our
By A Nose Found Wanting
Fictional Tales of the Reattachment of the Nose: A guest post by Stephanie Allen In 1743 the French physician and writer Nicolas Andry argued ‘it is a very great deformity to have no nose at all, or to have it so short as to appear almost the same as if
The Bewitched Wife’s Cure
On 1 June 1682, a woman called Jane Kent found herself in the dock of the Old Bailey in London accused of witchcraft. The charge was a serious one, for amongst other things, she was accused of causing the death of a five-year-old girl by diabolic means. The charges stemmed
Purulent Matter: Opening an Abscess
A guest post by Olivia Smith Anthony Ashley Cooper’s case notes tell how, on the afternoon of 12 June 1668, his abscess was ‘opened’, following which a ‘large quantity of prurulent [sic] matter, many bags & skins came away’.[1] The process of opening (v.) is both recorded and performed by
Tudors, Tonics, and Sickly Stuarts: Talks and Signings
Since Maladies and Medicine: Exploring Health and Healing, 1540-1740 came out last year, we have been doing lots of exciting events to share the ideas in the book with everyone. We have given a number of sold-out talks across the country from the Wellcome Trust in London to the 1620s