Times of Crisis

Burton’s recommendations of herbal and mineral remedies for melancholy – ranging from the sundew plant through to coral – were not unique for the time.

Image: John Gerard, The herball, or, Generall historie of plantes..., London, printed by Iohn Norton, 1597, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (STC 11750 copy 6)

In the early modern period, individuals or households would often document medical and culinary knowledge in ‘recipe books’. These books suggest treatments for a range of ailments, including linseed oil, rosin and beeswax for swelled legs or ‘any Greene Wound’, and a mixture of wine and ‘powder of ffoxes blood’ for kidney stones. Here, Margaret Baker suggests to ‘eate bread spread with honye and at top butter’ to help with the plague.

Image: Receipt book of Margaret Baker c. 1675, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (V.a.619)

Surviving ‘casebooks’ of astrologers/healers also offer rich insights into the types of ailments patients presented with and their recommended cures. The casebook of Richard Napier documents a number of patients presenting to him with melancholic symptoms. He also diagnoses several patients with melancholy after drawing up their astrological charts.

Image: Casebook of Richard Napier entry for John Coleman, March 14, 1620, Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Ashmole 213 (f. 143v))

The roots of patients’ melancholy range from grief over the loss of a loved one to financial stress. Oftentimes Napier recommends bloodletting as a cure:

John Coleman of Little Brickhill. Tuesday 14 March 1620, 10 am. Has not slept for 5 or 6 days. Crazed in his brain. Troubled with melancholy. [In chart] Frantic. [Treatment including bleeding from the head vein.]

Image: Casebook of Richard Napier entry for John Coleman, March 14, 1620, Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Ashmole 213 (f. 143v))

George Wither was imprisoned at least twice at Marshalsea Prison. The first in 1614 for four months, and then again in 1621 for Wither’s Motto. Nec Habeo, nec Careo, nec Curo (‘I Don’t Have, I Don’t Want, I Don’t Care’), a declaration of his virtues and a criticism of others’. Wither had other brushes with the authorities. In 1646, Parliament sentenced him to pay £500 in damages for his text Justitiarius justificatus, which accused Sir Richard Onslow, a Member of Parliament, of treason. Copies of the book were also publicly burnt and Wither was imprisoned for this text, although it is not certain where.

Image: Anonymous artist (after James Lewis), A View of the South Front of the North Side of the Marshalsea Prison…, published by Robert Wilkinson, London, 1812, British Museum, London (1880,1113.5184)

In 1661 he was held at Newgate Prison for his text Vox vulgi a poem in censure of the Parliament of 1661. He stayed there for about seven months before being transferred to the Tower of London, where he was denied pen, ink or paper. Newgate had previously housed the playwright Ben Jonson for his killing of actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel.

Image: Frontispiece to Thomas Bayly, ‘Herba Parietis, or the Wall Flower as it Grew out of the Stone-Chamber belonging to the Metropolitan Prison of London, called Newgate’, London, J.G. for John Holden, 1650, British Museum, London (1884,1213.37)

On 26 October 1605, William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, was handed a letter by a servant. This letter would prove to be one of the most significant in history. It had been handed to the servant by a stranger in the street and warned Lord Monteagle not to attend the opening of Parliament on 5 November.

I would aduyse you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift youer attendance at this parliament … I saye they shall receive a terrible blow this parliament.

Image: The Monteagle letter 26 October 1605, The National Archives, London (SP 14/216 Pt1 (11a))

Lord Monteagle rushed to Whitehall and the King, and James I was informed of the letter’s contents. At midnight on Monday, 4 November 1605, acting on orders, Sir Thomas Knyvett searched the rooms below Parliament House. Knyvett encountered a man coming out of a room stacked with firewood. The man, later identified as Guy Fawkes, was an explosives expert who had hidden thirty-six barrels of gunpowder among the stacks. Fawkes was arrested and under torture confessed to the plan, now known as the Gunpowder Plot, to assassinate James I.

Image: A broadside on the Gunpowder Plot, London, Abraham Hogenberg, 1606, British Museum, London (1848,0911.451)

Charles I’s reign was marred by religious conflict. In 1633 he appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury and together they initiated reforms centred on religious uniformity across the three kingdoms – England, Scotland and Ireland.

Image: Charles I’s copy of The Book of Common Prayer, 1634, Trinity College Library, Cambridge (C.12.82)

This included imposing a variation of the Church of England Book of Common Prayer, known as Laud’s Liturgy, on the Scots. Such a move proved disastrous. Protests erupted and ministers were targeted. It is said that after hearing of these episodes, Walter Whitford (the Bishop of Brechin) aimed pistols at his congregation while reading from the Book. This copy of Laud’s Church of England Booke of Common Prayer contains notes in the hand of one of Laud’s clerks planning the Scottish additions. It also contains Charles I’s signature authorising Laud’s adaptations

Image: The Booke of Common Prayer, 1632, Christ Church Library, Oxford (MS540)

Mercurius Britanicus pushed the cause of Parliament and was pitched against the Royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus. These two newsbooks give us an astonishingly vivid sense of the tumultuous times as war and ideological conflict dominated Britain.

Image: John Birkenhead (editor), Mercvrivs avlicvs, communicating the intelligence, and affaires of the Court, to the rest of the Kingdome, August 10, 1644, edited by Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (M1752.5 no. 84)

This pamphlet depicts an imaginary scene with Sir John Birkenhead – writer for Mercurius Aulicus – standing in the pillory with soldiers in the foreground.

Image: Newes from Smith the Oxford Jaylor. With the arraingment of Mercurius Aulicus … for his notorious libelling, etc., 5 February, 1644, British Library, London (E.27.(13.))

Despite the prevalence of home or self-care, the seventeenth century saw an increase in how much patients were willing to spend on their health. As such, cities across England became home to apothecaries. Unlike surgeons or physicians, apothecaries were retail-focused, and their shops were designed to attract customers - with their wares and shopfronts carefully arranged to attract people from the street.

Image: The Doctor’s Dispensatory or the Art of Phisick restored to practise London, Nathaniel Brooke, 1646–77, British Museum, London (1843,0513.124)

This household medicinal and cookery book contains instructions for taking ‘Culpepers dispensatory Powder for the woorms’.

Apothecaries were also the target of criticism. Robert Burton, for instance, was very suspicious of the compound drugs produced by apothecaries. Those in neighbouring medical fields also had their concerns…

Image: Medicinal, household and cookery receipts seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (V.a.563)

In this document, the physician William Butler, who once tended to James I, talks about an earl sick with fever, who was prescribed ‘The Balme of Hieriche’ (possibly hieracium (hawkweed)) by ignorant and ‘unskillfull apothecaries’. Butler instead suggests garden exercise.

Image: William Butler manuscripts ,c. 1600–18, Clare College Archive, University of Cambridge (CCPP/BTLR)

While Butler’s opinion of apothecaries did not stand in isolation, his own medical practices were somewhat questionable: it is said he once put a man inside the chest cavity of a recently-slaughtered cow to revive him from an opium overdose, and ‘cured’ another patient of a fever by having him thrown off a balcony into the Thames.

Image: William Butler manuscripts, c. 1600–18, Clare College Archive, University of Cambridge (CCPP/BTLR)