Stobart Anne - Critical approaches to the history of Western herbal medicine: from classical antiquity to the early modern period

Bloomsbury Academic

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First published 2014

Susan Francia, Anne Stobart and Contributors, 2014

Susan Francia, Anne Stobart and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-4357-0

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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

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This book is not intended to offer treatment with herbal medicine. No herbs, recipes or other advice that may be described or considered in this book should be used without professional guidance from a medical or herbal practitioner. The publishers, editors and contributors assume no liability for any injury or damage to persons or property resulting from any use of the remedies or methods contained in this book.

A number of organizations have played a key role in bringing together our contributors and we thank the National Institute of Medical Herbalists Education Fund, Middlesex University and Wellcome Trust for funding and support.

Our grateful thanks go to our colleagues in the Herbal History Research Network for their support: Barbara Lewis, Vicki Pitman, Christina Stapley and Nicky Wesson. Sadly, a founder member of the group, Annie Hood, museum curator and herbal practitioner, passed away in 2012: she would have been delighted to see the publication of this book. Particular thanks are due to our contributors and to those who have supported the development of links between researchers in the history of herbal medicine, including Celia Bell, Claire Bowditch, Ross MacFarlane, Mark Nesbitt, Kay Piercy, Jose Prieto, Liz Williamson and Alun Withey. We are grateful to Jill Baines and Linda Lever for assistance in checking the text. Finally, a special thanks to Elaine Hobby, Jane Whittle and John Wilkins for their help and advice.

Marie Addyman is an independent scholar with a focus on Tudor and Elizabethan culture. Arising out of these interests and her passion for practical gardening, she has researched and taught material relating to early plant and garden history. She helped set up and deliver the Morpeth celebrations for Turners 500th anniversary, with publication of a short book on his life and work for that event, William Turner: The Father of English Botany (Friends of Carlisle Park, 2008). She contributes to the annual Morpeth William Turner Symposium, is engaged in producing a short book on William Turners son, the London physician Peter Turner, and is in the middle of a longer study of William Turners botanical medicine.

Richard Aspin is Head of Research and Scholarship at the Wellcome Library, and formerly Curator of Western Manuscripts and Head of Special Collections at the Wellcome Library. He has a keen interest in researching medical history, and has contributed a number of articles on items in the Wellcome collections. His publications in Medical History include: The papers of Sir Thomas Barlow (18451945), John Evelyns tables of veins and arteries: A rediscovered letter, Seeking Lister in the Wellcome collections and Who was Elizabeth Okeover?.

Alison Denham has practised as a medical herbalist since 1984. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, and has a special interest in the quality, safety, cultivation and conservation of medicinal plants. In 2006 she was appointed to the Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. As a past President of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists she took an active role in the preparation of the recommendations on the regulation of herbal practitioners. Alison has contributed to The Western Herbal Tradition (Elsevier, 2010) and is currently researching John Skelton who was a prominent herbal practitioner in the nineteenth century.

Susan Francia has Masters degrees from both Oxford and Harvard universities, and has taught and carried out research at Harvard. Her background is in the history of medicine and in comparisons between European and Islamic medical history. She is a qualified medical herbalist and was in practice for 12 years. She has extensive experience in teaching herbal medicine, and has taught the history of herbal medicine at Middlesex University. She now works as an independent researcher. Susan has published on Islamic history and on social and medical history in England. She is currently working on the history of medicine in medieval Devon.

Jill Francis completed her PhD, working under the supervision of Professor Richard Cust, at the University of Birmingham. Her area of research was an investigation into the gardening practices of Elizabethan and early Stuart England, exploring how the inherently ephemeral activity of gardening can offer a new perspective on defining status and identity within early-modern gentry society. Her research has included a detailed examination of early-modern gardening manuals, as well as trawling through seventeenth-century gentry manuscript collections archived as far afield as the Huntington Library in California. She has had two articles published in Garden History, the journal of the Garden History Society, and one in the Midland History journal.

Elaine Hobby is Professor of Seventeenth-Century Studies in the English and Drama Department at Loughborough University. Her interest in early-modern herbal remedies grows from her experience of editing two midwifery manuals, Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, 1671 (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Thomas Raynalde and others, The Birth of Mankind, 15401654 (Ashgate, 2009). Her academic training is as a literary historian.

Brian Moffat is an archaeo-ethnopharmacologist and Director of Investigations for the Soutra Hospital Archaeo-ethnopharmacological Research Project, Scotland (SHARP). The project is funded by the Soutra Archeo-Medicine Charitable Trust and by many other medical, historical and archaeological trusts and societies, as well as individual supporters. The work involves over 2,000 participating researchers, and various reports on work in progress have been published. Public outreach is achieved through open days and Dr Moffat has given lectures worldwide over a number of years.