Woman healers of the Seventeenth Century, by Leslie Wilson

A Young Lady called Henrietta Boyle, Christian Friedrich Zincke, Wikimedia 

If you think about women in medicine in the past, the chances are you'd think first of all of midwives, and yet, four hundred years or so ago, women were playing an active role in medical care. The philosopher Hobbes said he much preferred 'an experienced old woman' to the 'most learned and inexperienced physician.' Nowadays, people speak perjoratively of 'old wives' tales,' and yet medical research often confirms views that doctors used to dismiss (like getting a cold if your feet get wet).

Far from being amateurs, the women had access to medicines handed down from generation to generation, with proven efficacy. Sir Ralph Verney, writing to his wife in 1647, advised her to give her child 'n phisick but such as midwives and old women, with the doctors approbation, doe prescribe; for assure yourselfe they by experience know better than any phisition how to treat such infants.' Women cured lame legs, brought down swollen arms, worked as oculists.

spearmint, once used to cure watering eyes

Some of these were paid, but others, notably aristocratic ladies, did the work for no pay. One of these was Madam Springett, the mother-in-law, from her first marriage, of the early Quaker Mary Pennington, and I can't do better than to quote from what her daughter-in-law wrote about her in later life.

'She kept several poor women employed in summer, simpling (gathering herbs) for her; and in winter procuring for her such things as she wanted in surgery, physic, and sore eyes. She had excellent judgment in all these, and admirable success; which made her famous, and sought unto out of several counties, by persons of the first rank, as well as those of other classes. She daily employed her servants in making oils, salves, balsams, drawing of spirits, distilling of waters, making syrups and conserves, lozenges and pills.

 melissa officinalis, calming herb and good for digestion

She was so famous for taking off spots and cataracts from the eyes, that Stephens, the great oculist, sent many to her, when the case was difficult.. She cured.. many desperate burns, and cuts, and dangerous sores that came by them.. One very remarkable cure of a burn I shall mention. A child's head was so burnt, that its skull was like a coal: she brought it to have skin and hair, and invented a thin pan of beaten silver, covered with bladder, to preserve the head in case of a knock or fall.'

People came hundreds of miles to consult Madam Springett, and stayed in the area while she dealt with their case, sometimes for months. She could have twenty patients to see in a morning.

Being a lady of substance, she never took a penny for these services, though she did make wealthy patients buy the ingredients for the medicines.

What is clear from the above account is that Madam Springett relied on the expert knowledge of her female herb-gatherers, and also must have trained the servants who made up the medicines. I wonder if some of them subsequently set up as healers on their own account? I would also love to have the details of her cures for cataracts.

eye-bright, for eye problems!

Doubtless some of the illnesses went away of their own accord, and the placebo factor may also have been involved. But dermatological conditions, for example, are notably tricky to treat. I have found myself, through trial and error, that witch hazel is better for the inflammation I get from some mosquito bites than any steroid creams or anti-histamines, and many herbal 'house remedies' remain unattested simply because the big pharma companies aren't interested in testing or developing them.

In those days, you had the choice between a woman who had spent years observing illness and the effects of various herbal substances on them, or a doctor who had trained in what was largely a theoretical discipline, based on 'humours', and eager to let pints of blood from already weakened patients, literally bleeding some of them to death. The women healers were arguably the more scientific of the two.

The doctor's visit, Jan Steen, (Google Art Project)

Women (particularly aristocratic women) also functioned as bone-setters, so when one of the villagers in my novel 'Malefice' broke his leg, Alice Slade, the local 'cunning woman' was called in to set it, because the lady of the manor was in childbed.

However, even in Henry VIII's reign, legislation was being passed to restrict women's work in this respect. As with midwifery, the male doctors formed professional associations and excluded women, though of course household and herbal remedies continued to be practised, but this was more and more confined to the women's own families and friends.

In addition, as the eighteenth century progressed, more and more villages were removed from proximity from the great houses. Blenheim and Nuneham Courtney spring to mind. The lady of the manor must have been similarly cut off. She might still sally out to visit the poor, but only to dole out broths and advice. In Capability Brown's centenary year, it's worth considering how his landscape gardening quarantined the gentry from their 'inferiors.' If you want to see how it used to be, before Brown, Kent et al started holding their noses at the whiff of a cottage, go to Chastleton House in Oxfordshire. It's almost shocking to see how cheek-by-jowel the village is with the great house. Madam Springett's local patients, in such a set-up, would have found it an easy walk to the doctor.








References:
The Working Life of Seventeenth Century Women, by Alice Clark
Experiences in the life of Mary Pennington (written by herself) with preface by Gil Skidmore,  Friends Historical Society.
Malefice, by Leslie Wilson, reissued on Kindle May 2016

Cabinet of Curiosities - the Blue and White Jar - Woman's Work? by Leslie Wilson

I found it in an antique shop; the wonderful Aladdin's cave of Stuart House which I always go to when I visit Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. My birthday was coming up and I knew immediately what I wanted as a present. When I saw it across a room crowded with porcelain and pottery, I thought it was Chinese, but when I got closer to it, I recognised that it was European. The mark suggests that it is, in fact, Delft, made by Pieter Adriaensz Kocks (it was sold me as a Pieter Kocks jar), which would date it between 1701, when Pieter took over the workshop from his father Adriaen Kocks, who became a director of the De Grieksche A factory in 1687. The factory produced tinware inspired by Kangxi blue and white porcelain.

I love blue and white pottery and porcelain, and also am very fond of the European ceramics that drew on the Chinese styles, like the Onion Design I mentioned in my blog about Germany: Memories of a Nation. I find the fusion between Eastern motifs and Western interpretation particularly pleasing, and so I was thrilled to be able to buy this piece - it wasn't as expensive as you'd suppose, perhaps because it is not perfect; there are little chips out of it here and there and the dog, or tailless cat - I'm not sure which, but a charming animal - who sits on the top of it is damaged. I don't care.

Being Delft, though it looks like porcelain, it is not - the secret of porcelain was still closed to the West when it was made. It is tinware, which means it is made out of pottery, whitened with a glaze based on lead oxide and tin, and that is what gives the porcelain-like milkiness.
At a speculative guess, I would say that it probably was produced towards the beginning of the Pieter Adriaensz period; this is based on the information I have gleaned (and I haven't been able to find out that much, alas) which suggests that later on the factory concentrated on Imari-style ware. My jar looks more like Adriaen's productions - it could, of course, be a fake, but I do hope not. It is certainly very beautiful and skilfully made. However, I do find the de Grieksche factory interesting, because after Pieter's death, only two years after he had taken over the business, 'he' continued to produce Delft ware, because his widow, Johanna van der Heul, kept the workshops going. I tried as hard as I could to find out more about that, but without success so far, so if any reader of this blog can point me in the right direction? I would be very pleased.

However, I turned to Alice Clark's invaluable The Working Life of Seventeenth Century Women, and found that in England at least, shortly before my jar was made, it was quite usual for widows, and sometimes sisters, to take over businesses after their husbands' or brothers' death. Whether they actually did the work is another matter and harder to discover; however, I do seem to remember that intricate decorative work on chinaware has historically been done by women. It does make me feel quite strange to see that a piece of Delftware was 'produced by Pieter Adriaensz' at a period when he was already dead, and demonstrates all too clearly how women's work has become invisible in history. Indeed, it was from only one Internet site that I discovered about Johanna. I salute her, though, across the centuries. I hope my jar was produced under her direction.
Now, when I look at it, I don't see 'Chinese' but eighteenth-century interiors, where it sits on a high mantelpiece in some home probably much better-off than mine, originally. De Grieksche made items for King William and Queen Mary at Hampton Court, and I have read in one source that the more European designs, which the flower-panels on mine seem to be, were produced for the British market. The grooves were made by drawing fingers down a pot made on the wheel; sometimes I put my own fingers in them and imagine I am touching the fingers of that long-ago workman (or woman even?).

I do wonder who owned it before me - it is a constant fascination to me, since I shall almost certainly never find out - and I love to imagine. It may have been made and brought to England in William of Orange's last year of life, or else in the reign of Queen Anne. It connects me to those times, across three hundred years, and is very beautiful. It sits now opposite my Meissen vase, behind a  studio glass scent bottle my husband bought me in Paris - on receipt of which I stood, as I did when I was given the Delft jar, speechless and breathless with excitement - and beside the blanc-de chine Kuan Yin, dating from the mid-20th century, that I found in an antique shop in Hollywood Road in Hong Kong. They all get on very well together.

PS: the colour on the last photograph is truer than the other ones, which come out just a little too blue. In fact, the colour exactly matches the blue of an antique Chinese snuff-bottle (Qing Dynasty) that I also possess.