Interviewed by: Alison Denham
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Tell us about the main focus of your herbal history research and why it matters?
My doctoral thesis was all about domestic medicine in the seventeenth-century. Through researching recipe collections in the archives for a number of South-West families in the seventeenth-century I aimed to discover which medicinal recipes were actually used. So, I analysed the recipes that were collected, from ailments to ingredients, and looked for corroborative evidence in household accounts, letters and other sources. For example, I worked out which recipe ingredients were herbs that could have been easily grown (or foraged) alongside those that might need to have been purchased from an apothecary or elsewhere. This research is important to better understand the day-to-day reality of seventeenth-century household healthcare. My findings matter because they help us to appreciate the roles that women and men played in past healthcare. Surprisingly, these were not always the expected ones! Further, we can see how attitudes to medicines and self-help in healthcare have developed over the centuries…
Full interview: