Cambridgeshire doctors in the olden time, 1466-1827 / by W.M. Palmer.
- Palmer, W. M. (William Mortlock), 1866-
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cambridgeshire doctors in the olden time, 1466-1827 / by W.M. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
24/94 page 216
![unto a salve and make a plaister thereof & laye it to the sore place & w'in six howers yt will cease aking.” Six hours seems a long time to look forward to when one has acute gout in the toe. In connection with a fellow or boil this remedy is given: “A salve to close up the wounde after ye coore 1s droune out of it Take one poune of may butter & half a pound of wax & seathe them on the fyer and treye them well, then take a handful of planten & as muche rybworte, 1) handfull of valerian, half a handful of brookelime, as much smalledge, a good handfull of orpine, a handful of tutsone, as much sinkfoyle, half a handful of grounde ivey, & a handfull of green elder flowers, cut them small & seathe all these in the waxe and maye butter, then strayne them & put them in dishes or make it in cakes.” May butter is highly clarified butter, very pale in colour. The mention of ribwort and plantain shows a nice appreciation of differences between members of the genus Plantago. One of the strangest recipes is this: “Take glow wormes and being covered with hors dung in a certaine time they will desolve, wich being mixt with a like proportion of quicksilver first clensed, which will be in sixe times washing in vinegar mixt with bay salt, which after everie washing and rubbing must be cast away and then hote watter put to the quicksilver and washed, and then [the glow-worms and quicksilver] inclosed in a pure glass [the product] will give as much light in the dark as the moon.” Glow-worms are very common at Linton still, but I have not tried this recipe. But to return to country doctors. At the present day my district as a parish doctor contains about twenty-five square miles, with a population of 4400, and my nearest colleague is four miles distant. In dirty snowy weather the work sometimes seems hard. But the seventeenth century surgeons must have had a much harder time of it in this part of the country. Mr Ambrose of Ickleton, Mr Ady of Shudy Camps, and Mr Alington of Brinkley were at least eight miles from each](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28986179_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
