Beyond Home Remedy: Women, Medicine, and Science

Beyond Home Remedy: Women, Medicine, and Science one of the Exhibitions at the Folger opened January 21, 2011 and closed on May 14, 2011. The exhibition was curated by Rebecca Laroche with Georgianna Ziegler. Consultation was provided by Steven Turner and Leslie K. Overstreet with the generous loans and contributions of the Smithsonian Institution. Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Winton and Carolyn Blount exhibition fund of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

This exhibition explores women's roles in early modern medicine through the records they left in recipe books, their ownership marks in books by male authorities, and other evidences of their labors as caregivers and healers. While some of the ingredients and methods women used may seem strange to modern sensibilities, the elaborate nature of the recipes women prepared and shared with one another demonstrate the female contribution to early modern medicine and scientific discovery.

Contents of the exhibition

Recipe: Sirrop of Violets

Women in the seventeenth century were not allowed to become members of the College of Physicians (which licensed practitioners in greater London) or the Royal Academy of Science (which included such widely published figures as Robert Boyle). However, evidence shows that women did hold deep knowledge, gained from hands-on experience, in what have now become the fields of anatomy, botany, and chemistry. Even though women were rarely represented as experts and their direct influence was sparsely recorded, the observations they made were in line with those explained by early scientists, and the work they did contributed to the cultural moment in essential ways.

Important to this exhibition is Hannah Woolley's recipe "To make Sirrop of Violets", in which she adds lemon, ostensibly to cut the sweetness of the tonic, and notes that the juice will change the syrup from an opaque purple and “make it look purely transparent.”

Transcription of Recipe "To make Sirrop of Violets": Pick your Violets very clean, and beat them well in a Mortar, then strain them, and to one pint of the juyce take one quarter of a pint of Spring-water; put it into the Mortar with the stamped Violets which you have strained, stamp them together a while, and strain the Water well from them, and mix them with your other juyce; then put it into a long Gally-pot, and to each pint of juyce put in one pound of double Refined Sugar; let it stand close covered for the space of twelve hours; then put in a little quantity of Juyce of Lemmon, that will make it look purely transparent; then set your Gally-pot into a Kettle of seething-water covered, till you find it to be thick enough; then set it by till it is cold, then put it up.

This observation mirrors the observations of chemist Robert Boyle, who conducted experiments showing that acids turned deep purple liquids (such as Syrup of Violet and red cabbage water) red—and base (or alkaline) solutions turned the same liquids green. In essence, women were preparing medicines at home with a knowledge of botany, anatomy, and chemistry that equalled that of some of their male counterparts.

Watch a video on the making of this medicine.

Listen to Steven Turner share more insight on Robert Boyle, his experiments, and his influences.

Items included

• Hannah Woolley. The queen-like closet, or Rich cabinet: stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying and cookery. London: for Richard Lowndes, 1675. Call number: W3284; displayed pp. 106-107.
• Thomas Chamberlayne. The complete midwife's practice enlarged, in the most weighty and high concernments of the birth of man. London: for Obadiah Blagrave, 1656. Call number: C99.2 and LUNA Digital Image.
• Robert Boyle. Experiments and considerations touching colours. London: for Henry Herringman, 1664. Call number: B3967 and LUNA Digital Image.

Learn more about violet's in Shakespeare's Hamlet in this document.

Supplemental materials

Interactive: Remedy Ingredients

Explore ingredients used by clicking through items in this virtual display case.

Video

Syrup of Violet is found in many women’s recipe books and was widely used in the early modern period both as a sweet beverage and to ease fevers, coughs, and other inflammations. See the process of creating this calming and colorful tonic, and learn about the role of the syrup in the color-change indicator tests that are still used in identifying acids and bases.

Women made important contributions to the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. Learn about their role from curator Rebecca Laroche.

Renaissance women provided vital medical care to their families and communities, from performing surgery to delivering babies! Listen to curator Rebecca Laroche share this history.