What the Apothecary Ordered: Questionable Cures Through the Ages
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Caroline Rance
Caroline Rance is studying for an MA in Medicine, Science, and Society at Birkbeck College, University of London and writes the successful blog "The Quack Doctor," which has been shortlisted twice for the Medgadget medical blog awards. Her novel, set in an 18th-century hospital, was published in 2009. She regularly speaks on quacks and quackery and lives in Buckinghamshire.
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Reviews for What the Apothecary Ordered
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's a fun quick read! My only complaint is that I wish the pictures had captions, a lot of them make little to no sense without them.
Book preview
What the Apothecary Ordered - Caroline Rance
CHAPTER
I
DESPERATE REMEDIES
Of annoying ailments and deadly diseases
BLEEDING AT THE NOSE
Father Schott the Jesuit says, that to stop a Bleeding at the Nose, you need only to hold to the Nose the Dung of an Ass very hot, wrap’d up in an Handkerchief, upon the plea that the Smell will presently stop it. Wecher did the same with Hogs Dung very hot done up in fine Taffeta, and put into the nose.
– Recreations Mathematical and Physical, 1708
THE ANTI-PESTILENTIAL QUILT
This quilt must be worn at the Pit of the Stomach, next the Skin; which may easily be contrived by hanging it over the Neck with a Ribband or Fillet, and tying it close to the Stomach by another Ribband going round the Body.
Care must be taken to pull off the Quilt every Week, and to dry it gradually by the Fire; not too near, but sufficiently so that the Heat may draw from it all the Moisture which it shall have attracted from the Body by Insensible Perspiration.
It is by this insensible Perspiration, effected by the Quilt, that the Blood purges itself of malignant Humours, the Retention of which often occasions melancholy Diseases, and especially the Small Pox.
– Manner of Wearing the Anti-Pestilential Quilt, c. 1780
SNEEZING
Sneezing, provoked by a feather, relieves heaviness in the head; it is said too, that to touch the nostrils of a mule with the lips, will arrest sneezing and hiccup.
– Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, c. AD 77–79
FOR THE AGUE
A small living spider should be rolled up in a cobweb, then put into a lump of butter and eaten while the fit is on. Pills, also, may be made of the cobwebs in which the eggs remain, and taken daily for three days; after which time it would be dangerous to continue the treatment.
– Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, 1890