Soothing Sunburn

Mary Fleetwood has a recipe for easing sunburn in her manuscript recipe book.

‘A Water for Sun Burning’

Take a still full of snails, put to it 1 quart of Creame, 1 pint of white wine vinegar, 1/2 pound of bitter almonds, 6 limons, 1 handfull of white lilly roots, 1 quart of strawberrys.

‘Country Receipts collected by Mrs John Floyer’, Lichfield Cathedral MS21

As the title of this recipe collection indicates, Mary Fleetwood nee Archbold was the wife of Sir John Floyer, whose commissioning of a watch to time pulse rates we have discussed on this blog before. Mary was a widow with a teenage son when she married Floyer in 1680 and went on to have two further sons, John and Archbold. Her recipe collection contains cures she has gathered from various family members, friends, and physicians. She also includes family anecdotes, as was customary, including the time her father was caught by a coachman’s whip as he walked in Salisbury, which left him with a nasty wound to his eye. She also mentions her mother’s gout and her Aunt Lake’s sciatica, for which she recommended a herb infused bath.

Since, like many wives of physicians in this era, not much information about Mary’s life is left in the historical record, this manuscript recipe book at least plugs some gaps and gives the reader a sense of her as her own person. I’ll still stick to buying my aftersun from the chemist though!