LATER SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HERBALS 177 



one of them in fayre water. Yf you will have this only to wash 

 yor hands put in a little Venice soape but putt none of that 

 in for youre face." 



" For them theyr speech faileth. Take a handfull of ye 

 cropps of Rosemary, a handfull of sage and a handfull of Isop 

 and boile them in malmsey till it be soft, then put them into 

 Lynen clothes and laye about the nape of the neck and the 

 pulses of the armes as whott [hot] as it may be suffred daily, 

 as it shal be thought mete and it will help it by God's grace. 

 For the same. Take staves acre and beate it and sowe it in a 

 linnen cloth and make a bagg noe bigger than a beane; if he 

 can chow it in his mouth lett hym, if not then lay it upon his 

 tongue." 



To the modern mind the medical recipes to be found in 

 these still-room books sound truly alarming, but in The Lady 

 Sedley her Receipt book they are not more so than the pre- 

 scriptions which were contributed by the most eminent physicians 

 of that day. In his paper x on this MS. Dr. Guthrie quotes 

 many of these recipes, amongst them one from the famous 

 Dr. Stephens, 2 so frequently quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby and 

 in other still-room books of the period. In Lady Sedley's book 

 his recipe is introduced thus : "A copy to make the sovreigns't 

 water that ever was devised by man, which Dr Stephens a 

 physician of great cuning and of long experience did use and 

 therewith did cure many great cases, and all was kept in secret 

 until a little before his death ; when the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury got it from him." Amongst the other contributors to this 

 MS. were no fewer than three of the doctors who attended 

 Charles II. in his last illness, and if they gave the king even in 

 a mild form medicines resembling those we find in this book, 

 Macaulay's description that " they tortured him for some hours 

 like an Indian at the stake " can hardly have been exaggerated. 



1 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1913. 



2 Dr. Stephens was the author of the Catalogue of the Oxford Botanical 

 Gardens. 



N 



