Hatfield - Memory, Wisdom and Healing

MEMORY, WISDOM AND HEALING

Farm buildings in Suffolk, from an album possibly by Clutterbuck. ( Norfolk Rural Life Museum)

MEMORY, WISDOM AND HEALING

The History of Domestic Plant Medicine

GABRIELLE HATFIELD

First published in 1999 by Sutton Publishing

The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved
Gabrielle Hatfield, 1999, 2013

The right of Gabrielle Hatfield to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9516 3

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the Authors Foundation for financial support when I began this book; to the Wingate Trust for a two-year Scholarship, and for their help and encouragement; to librarians and archivists, especially in Edinburgh and Norwich, for their patient help over many years; to Elizabeth Stratton, archivist at the John Innes Centre, for her help with the illustrations. I would like to thank the numerous individuals who have shared their memories and knowledge with me.

The Rudyard Kipling quotation from Rewards and Fairies (p. xi) is reproduced by permission of A.P. Watt on behalf of the National Trust, and extracts from A Countrymans Day Book are reproduced by permission of J.M. Dent/The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

Finally, I wish to thank my publishers for their help, support and encouragement, and John, Amanda, Sarah, Clare and Jonathan for their love and patience and for keeping my sense of humour alive.

P ICTURE C REDITS

I am grateful to the Biggar Museum Trust for permission to reproduce the photograph (Janet Bell). The illustration (Adam of Bethelnie) is reproduced by Permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland. I would like to thank Stella Ross-Craig, the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and the John Innes Foundation Historical Collections for the plant illustrations.

Common mallow ( Malva sylvestris ) From Stella Ross-Craig, Drawings of British Plants (by kind permission of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew/photograph courtesy of John Innes Foundation Historical Collections)

I NTRODUCTION

Anything green that grew out of the mould
Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old.

Rewards and Fairies

Rudyard Kipling

The story I wish to tell in this book concerns the use in Britain of everyday plants for treating everyday ailments, and it is the history of self-help rather than of official medicine. For early man, plants were the most obvious source of food, and their use in treating illnesses was probably discovered incidentally. Such discoveries would have obvious importance, and would be passed down from one generation to the next. Once written records began, some of this knowledge began to be recorded, but such recording was, by definition, done by the educated sector of society. The ordinary person would continue to use the knowledge passed down to him orally from his forebears. Little by way of written information would have filtered through to the mass of society. For this reason, a study of the history of medicine based on written records must be skewed heavily in favour of the medicine preached and practised by the educational elite. This book is an attempt to redress the balance, and to give some account of the ordinary do-it-yourself medicine practised by the ordinary person in Britain.

Yet if there is no written record of what is primarily an oral tradition, how can we hope to reconstruct the humble home medicine of the past? We have to rely on fragments of information available in poetry, proverbs, songs and ballads, all of them products of oral traditions. In addition, we can obtain snippets of information from the writings of the literate, on the occasions on which they refer to the practices of their uneducated countrymen. Another source of information may come as more of a surprise. It is still possible, though only just, to obtain information from country people in Britain concerning plant remedies used by them within living memory. Some of these remedies show a quite astonishing story of continuity through the generations. An example will illustrate this. While talking to a man in his sixties, now resident in Norfolk, it emerged that he was brought up in Scotland by his elderly grandmother, herself a great believer in simple plant remedies. He vividly remembered stories she had told him as a child of her own great-grandmother, whose family survived unscathed a fever which wiped out most of her village. The explanation given was that the house was all hung about with onions, and onions were also used as food. The outbreak of fever must have occurred some time during the eighteenth century, yet this story was being told as vividly as if it were a recent occurrence. Moreover, the message of eating onions to combat infection was still very firmly practised in the family, as indeed it is in many areas of Britain. Incidentally, this use of onions is now being vindicated by modern pharmacology.