The year is 1649 and Lady Jean Wemyss has a headache. Since paracetamol won’t be invented for another several hundred years, Jean reaches for the next best thing: a handwritten recipe book. The cure, written down in her mother’s neat hand, suggests the use of some trusted betony water.^[1] Jean soaks a length of cloth in the liquid and wraps it “double, thrise or four tymes” around her head. The assurance of probatem est (‘something proved’), written at the end of the recipe, perhaps provides Jean with her mother’s comfort and remedial care more than anything else.

This book, now known as the Elcho-Wemyss receipt book^[2], was created by the women of the Wemyss family who resided in Wemyss Castle, a clifftop castle overlooking the Firth of Forth and is now housed in the National Library of Scotland.  The small vellum-bound book was passed down at least three generations from the book’s original compiler Anne, Lady Elcho (d. 1649), to her daughter, Jean Wemyss (1629–1715). Jean, in turn, passed the manuscript to her own daughter, Anne Gordon (1663–1695), and it is likely that the book remained in the matrilineal line until at least 1735. It begins with a note in Jean Wemyss’s hand telling the reader:

this Book was my mothers in which many Receits which had from the most famous Phisitians that lived in her tyme

Jean’s mother, Anne, must have started this book some years earlier before passing it onto her daughter. Jean, in turn, contributed many recipes, as well as annotating and correcting several of her mother’s entries. Many of these recipes reveal knowledge that originated in the home and local environment, while also looking to outside sources from across the social strata. The ingredients reflect the different sources of knowledge; ranging from local plants and herbs, such as nettles and mint, to precious imported goods such as galangal, ‘dragon’s blood’ and pomegranate oil.

The book contains over 200 pages of recipes claiming to cure everything from smallpox (fol. 7r) to bad breath (fol. 9r). There are remedies to remove spots and brighten skin (fol. 3r), to strengthen a weak back (fol. 4v) and, very specifically, ‘to quench extreme drouth [thirst] of a woman with childe’ (fol. 30v). A number of these recipes relate to obstetrics and gynaecology such as ‘To mak ane hastie and easie deliverance of the birth’ (fol. 61v) and ‘A cloister for to be out in the matrix for staying the floures’ (fol. 45r), essentially an early modern tampon.

Early modern notions of fertility were a key component of daily life and medical practice but male-authored medical texts which concentrate on women’s health and gynaecology mainly conveyed the authors’ belief in the messy confusion of the womb as well as the woman. It was not until 1671 that the first female-authored medical handbook was printed in England: Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book.

Sharp uses plain language throughout to describe medical processes, symptoms, and precautions ‘of the art of midwifery’. She explains her choice of “purposely omitting hard names, that I might have no cause to enlarge my work; by giving you the meaning of them where there is no need, unless it be for such persons who desire rather to know Words than Things.”^[3] Here, Sharp obliquely criticises male-authored medical texts for midwives, such as Nicolas Culpeper’s The Dictionary for Midwives (1651), which used more ‘elite’ or exclusive language. Sharp’s only goal was to educate her readers. Other female-authored medical texts appeared shortly after Sharp’s, including Mary Trye’s Medicatrix, or The Women’s Physician (1675).^[4] Trye recommends using herbal remedies rather than drugs or bloodletting and advocates for the self-practice of medicine, rather than being treated by those with an elite education.

While these English texts were printed after the Scottish household manuscripts, we can see similarities in both. Through looking at texts such as the Elcho-Wemyss receipt book, we see the emphasis on women’s self-knowledge and self-ownership when it came to gynaecological health – particularly pregnancy and childbirth. In contrast to the expectations of elite educated men, the non-professional women writing household manuscripts demonstrated a sophisticated, integral understanding of their own bodies, and a desire to share that knowledge. The Wemyss family shared this knowledge with daughters and neighbours, with a deep concern not only for the safe delivery of a child, but also for the safety and comfort of a woman during her pregnancy.

I have found through examining the recipes found within the pages of the Elcho-Wemyss receipt book and others like it, that the welfare and safety of women shines through. The care, concern and sharing of knowledge through matrilineal manuscript practice is undeniable and extends beyond a strict medical framework. Women’s work in the home indicates their wider role in the development of medicinal and scientific practice in the premodern era. I believe that the Wemyss family’s active role in medicine and manuscript culture places them in the role of creators of knowledge and genuine participants in a broad community of practice. Probatem est!

[1] Betony (aka. common hedgenettle) is a flowering plant of the mint family which, according to Nicolas Culpeper’s Complete Herball (first published in 1653) is something of a cure-all for everything from headaches to snake bites.

[2] National Library of Scotland MS 3031.

[3] Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book; or, The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (London, 1671), p. 80.

[4] Mary Trye, Medicatrix, Or, The Woman-Physician (London, 1675).

Roslyn Potter is a SGSAH funded PhD researcher and tutor at the University of Glasgow focussing on early modern women’s manuscript culture, with a particular interest in song and sexual health in seventeenth-century Scotland. Roslyn has written on early Scottish women writers such as Lilias Skene and Elizabeth Melville, while her passion for Scotland’s early music led to a Carnegie Vacation Scholarship project on ‘Early Scottish Lyrics’. As a research assistant, Roslyn contributed to the ‘The Wayfarers’ project which explores how music can aid the teaching of controversial histories. Employing this method to her own teaching on medieval to early modern Scottish literature, Roslyn is currently developing a course highlighting early women’s role in song culture, sexual health, and peer education.