Chapter 6

Household medicine and recipe culture in eighteenth-century Britain

Care of the sick and health issues in the eighteenth century household are discussed in their complex social, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the day. Medical remedies belonged to a vibrant economy of knowledge and were eagerly collected and collated as part of a wider interest in the expansion of intellectual boundaries. As new physical theories, trends, and fads abounded, they were disseminated in a medical literature that sought to edify the general reader as well as the medical professional. While the consumption of medical texts was never massive, medical literature served both to promulgate new ideas and also to provide a further source from which medical knowledge could be derived and shared. The nascent market for proprietary medicines, including the explosion of newspaper advertising, brought metropolitan medicine to the doorsteps of towns and villages across Britain in increasing numbers. The proliferation of apothecary shops in towns also arguably reduced the need for households to concoct their own preparations, with a vast range of oils, syrups, pastes, pills, and medicaments on sale. Also, the impact of new technologies could be felt in bodily technologies and the willingness of people to attempt to correct or transform their own bodies, all made possible by new, “enlightened” materials. But the eighteenth century also saw much continuity. In many respects, medical knowledge remained firmly rooted in what had gone before. Humoral medicine still predominated, with all its attendant evacuative measures. Throughout the century, the home remained central to medicine, with public medicine only slowly beginning to make an impact, and then mostly in urban areas.