Household Medicine Before Modern Professional Care

Much everyday healthcare in early modern England began within the household. Families prepared syrups, poultices, foods and remedies, and knowledge circulated through relatives, neighbours, manuscript recipe books and printed texts.

Domestic medicine could combine inherited medical theory, practical experience, prayer and sometimes charms without users necessarily seeing the sharp boundary between medicine and magic expected by modern readers.

Source trail: Cambridge research resources on early modern medicine; scholarship by Margaret Pelling and Andrew Wear.

Related Journal record: Wise Women and Cunning Men.