Yesterday's therapy: A 1620 manuscript

Abstract

Medical photographers are called upon to record many strange and unusual subjects in the course of their professional duties. This manuscript must surely be one of the most extraordinary. Dating from AD 1620 it is the property of Sir William Paton who purchased it from the bookseller R. D. Gurney. The 65 pages of the document contain “receipts”, the ancient word for “recipes,” for many of the ills of mankind. Figure 1 is headed “A receipt to make Moses water”, whilst a little further down the page is written “For the pleurisy. Take an apple cutt off the top and pull out the core. Then put within the apple a prettie quantitie of olibanum, cover it again with the top and wrap it in wet paper and so rost it in the embers as you do a warden and let the patient eat the apple.