COOKERY & MEDICINE

Manuscript culinary and medicinal recipe book written in several hands, containing some 250 receipts including 'The Weapon Salve', eighteenth century

Footnotes

'IF THE WOUND BE DONE WITH THE THRUST OF A WEAPON, ANOINT FROM THE HILT': THE RECEIPT BOOK OF GRACE AND ELIZABETH BRIGGS.

Amongst more unusual cures included here is one for the "Weapon Salve", a remedy that healed a wound by treating the weapon that made it, hence the instruction here to "anoint from the hilt". Among the ingredients called for is a "...pint of knotted worms... the braines of a boar dried... the bloodstone called Hamatite all finly powdered... half an ounce or more of a dead mans scull...". If the weapon is not to hand, it is suggested that a willow stick be thrust into the wound, advising "...if it be a great and dangerous wound then the weapon is to be anointed every day...". It was a method first attributed to the Swiss physician Paracelsus in the sixteenth century and expanded upon by Sir Kenelm Digby who coined the phrase 'Powder of Sympathy' for the cure in the mid seventeenth century. Whether it was a natural or demonic process was widely discussed among physicians and clergy, who held that the cure was wrought by magic, a view compounded by William Foster in his Hoplocrisma Spongus, or a Sponge to Wipe away the Weapon-Salve of 1631. Our compiler assures the reader, however, that "...this salve have noe affinity with witchcraft or inchantment but worketh the effect or cure by Loadstone like virtue which it receives from the Starres and communicaties it by and through the agres, it cures all wounds of all Creatures haveing flesh and bones... although the party be many miles distant...".