Annotation 1
Annotation Plan
Names your group
Xiaomeng Liu
Describes your annotation plans (2 annotations)
1.Give a general description and interpretation about the medical recipes in MS Fr. 640, concerning the diseases they referred to, the ingredients, the method of preparing, the form of end product, the instruction for application, and how to these medical recipes within the context of the manuscript, and the broader context of medical culture in early modern Europe.
2. Experimenting with two groups of recipes and try to make of the preparation of drugs and healing practice through the making processes.
Lists the recipes from MS Fr. 640 (and any other source) that you have identified so far (include full recipes if practical)
p001v_1, p002r_2, p007v_a2, p007v_a3, p007v_a4, p011v_2, p015v_5, p015v_6, p016v_a1, p016v_a2, p019v_3, p020v_1, p020v_2, p020v_4, p020v_6, p037r_2, p044v_2, p044v_3, p046r_1, p046r_2, p046r_3, p046r_4, p047r_1, p047r_3, p047r_5, p048r_a2, p055r_3, p055r_4, p066v_1, p071r_3, p071r_4, p077r_a2, p079r_2, p079v_2, p101v_4, p102v_2, p103r_1, p103r_2, p103v_1, p103v_4, p104v_a1, p120v_1, p120v_2, p170v_a2, p170v_a3.
The main recipes I will focus on will be:
The first group: plaster/oil/ointment recipes
p066v_1
Preventing the swelling of breasts or to make those that became too large smaller
Take large loafs of bread freshly drawn from the oven and cut them in half & as hot as possible, lay them on &a ilz& do this 3 times a day & continue 4 or 5 days. Next, make a plaster with Venice turpentine or, even better, common turpentine. Mix in sumac, sloe from bushes, quince seeds, pomegranate flowers, leaves of olive trees, & the like, cooked & mixed with the turpentine. But, I forgot, one needs, after having laid on the hot bread, which is soggy & makes one sweat, to lay on linens soaked with water from a beehive, which is to say honey and wax extracted all together from the beehive.
p103r_1
Excellent burn relief
Heat linseed oil on a light fire, without letting it boil and simmer. But when it is hot put a quarter part (of the quantity of the linseed oil) of the newest wax you can find. Once it has melted, let it cool and when it begins to curdle, stir it continuously with a new wooden spatula for the length of time it takes to say 9 pater nosters, and while you say them, wash this composition with holy water, always stirring. Having said the first of 9 pater nosters, pour the first water out and add more, then wash and stir the composition for the time it takes to say 8 pater nosters. In the interval it takes to say 3 of the 7 pater nosters, and continuing thusly, add more water, as above, until there is only one last new pater noster left.Then you will have a soft white ointment, with which you will apply to the burn for 9 days. But don't apply any more, you must let the flesh grow over. Dress it twice a day and each time you wash your face with water, and mix it together a bit tepidly, without rubbing. But press it with wet linen, and wipe it similarly with fine linen, and apply the ointment. On which you can put binder's string. This will regrow your hair and prevent a scar from forming. A powder maker who was completely burnt but had no sign of burns taught it to me.
The second group: recipes for teeth bleaching
p046r_1
Oil of sulfur for the teeth
Some people whiten them with compositions of eau forte, however one says that this corrupts them afterwards and causes them to blacken. One says that oil of sulfur is excellent, but it needs to be applied in this way: take as much clove oil as can be held in a nutshell, as much rose honey, and seven or eight drops of oil of sulfur, and put it all together, and after having cleaned the teeth with a small burin, touch them lightly with a good bit of cotton dipped in the aforementioned oils and leave it for a little while, then spit it out or rinse the mouth with tepid water, and repeat two or three times. Oil of sulfur penetrates and is corrosive, and l but the clove oil and the rose honey correct it. Therefore use it with discretion.
p047r_1
For teeth
Sal ammoniac i ℥, rock salt 1 ℥, alum half ℥. Make water with the cornue, and no matter how little of it you touch the tooth with, the tartar and blackness will go away. It is true that it has a bad odor, but you can mix it with rose honey and a little clove oil or cinnamon oil.
Lays out a schematic plan for the historical, object-based, and hands-on research that will shed light on these recipes.
Historical issues:
Medical recipes is not a new topic in the history of medicine. One of the dominant approaches is the circulation of medical recipes in medical communities, social groups, family members and beyond. The main arguments lie in the exposure and transmission of medical knowledge, the different features of recipes recorded and (claimed to be) applied in different settings, and how the medical beliefs and practices of laypeople alter and enrich our understanding of the premodern medical culture. The Other approach looks into the recipes in details, probes into the origins, properties, circulation, and collecting practices of the ingredients, plant-, animal-, or mineral-based, within intra- and inter-regional trade and communication, which we called natural history, a way of collecting the wonder of the world, knowing the nature, building new knowledge, and expanding the border of empire in the early modern world.
The historical researches of the medical recipes has already been object-based, to some extent, both in terms of the medical recipes and of the ingredients as objects which was worthy collected and circulated not only in the medical community but also in the noble and wealthy, the literate and scholastic, dealers and households.
Building on the above-mentioned approaches, the reconstruction of medical recipes, or the hands-on research approach, can contribute in multiple ways of understanding the historical recipes, and uncover more aspects concerning the “object”, or “materiality” of the encoded practice. Here I intend to emphasize two points according to my preliminary research.
First, historical reconstruction can bring the technical issue (making process) as well as the interaction between the materials in to the understanding of “materiality”, which considering the recipes as a dynamic process rather than an enclosed entity or a simple combination of individual ingredients. As most of the medical recipes in the manuscript just require a small number of ingredients, it would be more applicable to take the making and applying process in to consideration. Even though one can make comprehensive research about each kind of ingredients through textual research, the making can shed lights on why the ingredients need to be prepared in certain ways in order to make it a usable therapy. Each ingredients, though have distinct curative effect on its own right, their property will (or will not?) be mingled and transformed through the making process. Does the mixture of several ingredients generates a new therapeutic effect? These questions might not have an answer in the end, but the making processes can inspire more research questions and give clues to the transformation of “materiality” through different technical preparations.
Second, Historical reconstruction of medical recipes, unlike that of other technical or art recipes, faced the most severe dilemma on testing the end products, in other words, there’s little effective methods available to testify the efficacy of the drugs being made. As the curative effect of modern pharmaceuticals largely builds on the three-phased clinical trial and the statistics yielded within the process, the actual effect in individual case varies according to the distinct physical and mental conditions of each patient, and could even be influenced by the social conditions and cultural beliefs of sufferings and diseases. The situation became even more clear when it comes to the premodern healing practices which are alleged to be more uncontrollable and individually based in the practical settings (though in the theoretical level, it could be consistent and generalized). Therefore, even if one can develop a method to conduct clinical trials of the medical recipes (given the circumstances of our project, it seems to be impossible), the efficacy of the drugs can not be fully reconstructed as we have no way to reconstruct an early modern French patient suffering the exact illness (rather than disease) described in the recipes and having the cultural belief of health and healing in that given period. As Charles Rosenberg makes the claim that the disease is “framed” in the cultural contexts and “negotiated” within different social groups, medical historians cease to view diseases as specific entities within human body, making the retrospective diagnosis an anachronistic approach to the history of disease. The “retrospective therapy”, in this sense, must also be relocated into the historical context. However, drawing on the practice of what we called today the “alternative medicines” and also those premodern healing traditions which survive in the modern world, like the Traditional Chinese Medicine, a certain level of “reconstruction” could be possible in a theoretical level which allows me to enquiry historical questions include: How can I make sense of a certain recipe in terms of the early modern medical theory and cultural belief? How can a set of recipes reveal and help to reconstruct the early modern “body” that shaped by the medical culture? How did some of the technologies, viewing as dangerous and ridiculous at present, be accepted and applied in early modern period? Why the different recipes for a certain kind of illness always have the similar forms and application method? Does it indicate the different physical forms of the drugs were relevant in curing the disease? Furthermore, there are two medical technologies in the manuscript, the injection and enema, which are inappropriate and probably impossible to do real reconstruction. But the technology itself is worth investigating in-depth to know more about bodily knowledge and how the human body interacted with technologies.
In the end, I hope through the reconstruction, both practically and theoretically, the recipes as practical healing knowledge may challenge or enrich the mainstream medical theory in the early modern Europe. As they are from a craftsman’s manual, presumably relevant to the common sufferings of the craftspeople, and supposed to be prepared by the patients themselves, the medical recipes could both find its location in the medical theories and reveal a distinct aspect of medical culture in early modern Europe.
Choices of recipes to try out
When focusing on the making process, the forms of the end products could be a proper way to consider in the initial stage. Here’s a rough category in terms of forms of medicine in the recipes: Smoke or vapor to inhale, filtered liquid for eyes and injection, drinking for intake, plaster/oil/ointment for external use. Since smoke as medicine has been done by previous lab seminar, and the second and third categories are hard to apply or end with a material that could be preserved for a long time, I choose to reconstruct the recipes from the last category, the plaster/oil/ointment. Since another group of students will focus on the gonorrhea recipes, My choices will be made among others.
I chose four recipes that could be categorized as two groups. The first group is the the plaster/ointment for external uses. These two recipes contains more ingredients and/or practical instructions than others, which have the potentials to do more hands-on work. The other group consists of two recipes concerning teeth bleaching. The ingredients are not complicated, but these two recipes have an alternative way to testify its efficacy. I can probably apply the medicine on animal teeth. (legally and ethically obtained human teeth for medical research can be get, but they are too expensive). It might be hard to get stained animal teeth, but the main things I think worthy trying is as stated in the recipe, “(compositions of eau forte) corrupts them afterwards and causes them to blacken” “Oil of sulfur penetrates and is corrosive, but the clove oil and the rose honey correct it.” Oil sulfur was also referred to in other recipes in the manuscript, and clove oil & rose honey was applied in both of the teeth bleaching recipes. Observing and comparing what the recipes work on the teeth can give more informations on the properties of the ingredient, and how the mixture improves the quality and relieves the “side effect”.
List of materials you expect to need (are they in the lab inventory? See the Materials and Sourcing Reminders) where you will source them, and safety considerations.
1. p066v_1
Materials in the lab inventory: turpentine, honey, beeswax, linen, pot, hot plate
Materials can be bought online: sumac, sloe, quince seeds, pomegranate flowers, leaves of olive trees
Others: bread of own making (I can make it myself)
2. p103r_1
Materials in the lab inventory: linseed oil, wax, water, linen, string, pot, hot plate
3. p046r_1
Materials in the lab inventory: cotton
Materials can be got easily: nutshell
Others: eau forte
oil of sulfur (need to be prepared in the lab, the recipes can be found at oil of sulfur, also see George Starkey's text, also related to the distillation technology)
animal teeth (still need to figure out what kind of animal teeth can be use and where to get them)
4. p047r_1
Materials in the lab inventory: rock salt, alum, water
Materials can be bought online: Sal ammoniac, clove oil/cinnamon oil, rose honey
Others: animal teeth
Eventually, before you start experiments, you will determine whether you need a safety protocol, and you will formulate one based on the Safety and Workflow template. Your document should describe your workflow, and what safety measures you will need to take. Upload it into the folder labelled Safety - Workflow and Protocol. Your file in this folder should be linked to in your Wiki field notes.
Safety protocol and workflow for medical recipes reconstruction
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
2016.[Month].[Day], [hh]:[mm][am/pm]
Location:
Subject:
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
2016.[Month].[Day], [hh]:[mm][am/pm]
Location:
Subject:
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
2016.[Month].[Day], [hh]:[mm][am/pm]
Location:
Subject:
ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MAKING FIELD NOTES
- note time
- note (changing) conditions in the room
- note temperature of ingredients to be processed (e.g. cold from fridge, room temperature etc.)
- document materials, equipment, and processes in writing and with photographs
- notes on ingredients and equipment (where did you get them? issues of authenticity)
- note precisely the scales and temperatures you used (please indicate how you interpreted imprecise recipe instruction)
- see also our informal template for recipe reconstructions