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1. 1 2020-11-17T13:17:48-08:00 Catherine Cunha cc5dc9b7774b6a676a31715e1bbd86b0ae5b91c6 Victorian Home Remedies Jessica Joudy 24 plain 1036654 2020-12-10T20:25:31-08:00 Jessica Joudy 3f0e1b6bb5ac4a0dc560f480bebf2ca72a5e08b2

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1. 1 2020-11-17T13:17:48-08:00 Catherine Cunha cc5dc9b7774b6a676a31715e1bbd86b0ae5b91c6 Victorian Home Remedies 24 plain 1036654 2020-12-10T20:25:31-08:00 Jessica Joudy 3f0e1b6bb5ac4a0dc560f480bebf2ca72a5e08b2

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• 1 2020-11-17T13:17:48-08:00 Victorian Home Remedies 24 plain 1036654 2020-12-10T20:25:31-08:00 Within our recipe selections, we chose two home remedies, "To Make Black Medicine" and "Cure for a Cough", because of its inclusion in this manuscript recipe book; we were a bit surprised to find multiple home remedies within this recipe book, so this was something that peaked our interests. We further explored the ways in which medicine was viewed and practiced in nineteenth century England, specifically looking at how alternative medicine was viewed and practiced during this time period. Note also that, although "To Make Black Medicine" denotes the recipe as a medical remedy, the recipe itself and the later inclusion of the same recipe under the name "Black Plaster", as well as research, indicates that this might not have been for internal use, but perhaps as a plaster or paint for linoleum or wood.
  
  For background, the foundations of modern medicine in England were being established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although the foundations of modern medicine were being established, there were also many crucial of shifts relating to the ways in which medicine was practiced during this time as well. Medicine before the nineteenth century turned out to be more charity-based (Brown). Medical dispensaries, like Aldersgate Street Dispensary, (which were the equivalent of medical offices today) were established in the eighteenth century. These dispensaries were opened and endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians. Due to the rise of poverty within England during the eighteenth century, specifically in London, these dispensaries began to fill the unmet need of crucial and vital outpatient care for the poor from the overcrowded hospitals (Hartston). With the decline in proper medical care, especially for the poor and vulnerable, an emerging theme that was coming forth concurrently during period in time was the rise in popularity of alternative medicine. To explain this rise further, we will use a popular form of alternative medicine at this time, hydropathy, as an example and case study. 
  
  Hydropathy was a form of alternative medicine that came from "Vincent Priessnitz’s discovery of the healing benefits of pure water and his establishment of Gräfenberg in the Silesian Alps in the mid-1820s as the first and most famous hydropathic center" (Marland and Adams, 500). Further, Priessnitz called his discovery the "negation of orthodox therapy; it was intended to make medicine redundant" (Bradley). Not too long after Priessntiz's discovery, hydropathic treatment centers were started throughout Britain. Despite the rise in these treatment centers, Marland and Adams argue in their article that the domestic practices of hydropathy heavily impacted its popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. 

  "Domestic guides, while validating home treatment, were also likely to publicize the benefits to be gained from attendance at water cure centers" (Marland and Adams 514). 

  With this, domestic practices of these different forms of alternative medicine at this time, like hydropathy, led to their respective rises in popularity during the nineteenth century. Arguably, the inclusion of "A cure for a cough", as well as other recipes such as "A Cure for Rheumatism", which included epsom salt, can speak to the use of alternative medicines and home remedies within the domestic spheres in Victorian England during the nineteenth-century; maybe this was also a reaction to the decline in quality medical care within Britain, with the poor being hardest hit. Further, this may give us a glimpse into figuring out what social class of the anonymous women fell into given the inclusion of these home remedies within this manuscript recipe book. 
  
  Along with hydropathy, there other forms of alternative medicine that we, from a modern-day perspective, may not fully understand or find a bit strange. Opium eating was one of them. In "Cure for a cough," one of the ingredients was in fact laudanum, an opiate that was widely used during this time period and is found in painkillers today. Of course today, we, as a society, are far more cautious about use of addictive drugs, but this was not the case for Victorian England. Most of the opium in the England during the early nineteenth century came from Turkey, accounting for about 80% - 90% of the total imports of the drug into England; Turkish opium had been noted for its strength and high quality (Berridge). Later, Opium usage began to be associated with China (Ng). Further, there were no restrictions on who could legally buy and sell opium in England until 1868. This led to many tragic deaths, like the instance of an infant dying of an overdose of laudanum due to the fact that the infant was mistakenly given syrup of laudanum instead of syrup of rhubarb; the bottles of both the syrup of rhubarb and laudanum were very similar, which ended up being the cause of this unfortunately fatal mistake (Berridge). This example pointed to the larger public health concern of the dangerous nature of such casual, unrestricted, opium use. In her article, "Victorian Opium Eating: Responses to Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England," Berridge states: 

   "the first series of figures on opium beginning in the early 1860s showed the full extent of the situation: 126 deaths from opiates in 1863, for instance, out of a total of 403 poisoning fatalities, with 80 deaths in that year and 95 in 1864 from laudanum and syrup of poppies alone. Around a third of all poisoning deaths in the decade were the result of the administration of opiates, and the relatively high accidental, rather than suicidal, death rate from opiates bore witness to the drug's easy availability" (443). 

  Both the recipes for "Cure for a cough" and "To Make Black Medicine," located within this manuscript recipe book, have given us a glimpse into the medicinal world within Victorian England during the nineteenth century, especially highlighting the ways the domestic sphere was heavily involved in different forms of alternative medicine that were happening outside of established medical spaces. It also points to how for a woman, managing a household was far more than cooking and baking, including domestic medicine and crafting.
• 1 2020-11-17T12:56:07-08:00 "Cure for a cough" 19 a recipe from the women's manuscript recipe book plain 1036654 2020-12-09T23:08:46-08:00 "Cure for a cough"
  
  “Cure for a Cough”
               good
  
  80 drops of laudanum 
  4 - teaspoonfuls of Antimo- nial wine - 
  10 teaspoonfuls
  Vinegar ¼ lb of treacle - 
  2 teaspoonfuls night + morning 
  if very troublesome 1 in the
  Middle of the day + night.
• 1 2020-11-17T13:06:17-08:00 Cosmopolitanism, National Identity, and Crossing National Lines 15 a discussion on nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to cooking plain 1036654 2020-12-10T20:28:48-08:00 Both in the past and now, food and cooking is intrinsically linked to culture and national identity. In Victorian England, good cooking was considered a sign of civility and class, and international cuisines, especially French and German cuisines, were delighted in. This Women's Recipe Book is certainly a sign of that cosmopolitan sense. As mentioned in the introduction to the text, the recipes in the text come from a variety of cultures, though mostly Western European, and include American, Scottish, French, and Spanish-style recipes. One recipe marks itself as "African", and is one of the few distinctly non-European entries in the recipe book. The recipe book's inclusion of recipes from a variety of different national and cultural backgrounds is certainly indicative of Victorian England's cross-cultural contact, and the ways in which it assimilated and communicated with non-English cultures and trade, especially as industrialization became more widespread.
  
  Even as the English began to view themselves in relation to the world as part of a cultural trade, nationalist and racist views grew in popularity. While recipes from other countries became more widespread, the cultural connections to food could also be used to draw lines between 'us' (the English, and some White Western Europeans) and 'them' (the non-Western Other), and this is demonstrated by some of the widely used cooking texts at the time. One of the most famously used cookbooks at the time was Mrs. Beeton's The Book of Household Management, by a woman cook named Isabella Beeton, published in 1861. It was written with the middle-class and housekeeping in mind, and included ways to cook, bake, set a table, clean properly, and more. In chapter 40, "Dinners and Dining", the book touched on the topic of race, culture, and cooking in a way that is recognizably racist. She wrote:

  "Man, it has been said, is a dining animal. Creatures of the inferior races eat and drink; man only dines. It has also been said that he is a cooking animal; but some races eat food without cooking it. A Croat captain said to M. Brillat Savarin, "When, in campaign, we feel hungry, we knock over the first animal we find, cut off a steak, powder it with salt, put it under the saddle, gallop over it for half a mile, and then eat it." Huntsmen in Dauphiny, when out shooting, have been known to kill a bird, pluck it, salt and pepper it, and cook it by carrying it some time in their caps. It is equally true that some races of men do not dine any more than the tiger or the vulture. It is not a dinner at which sits the aboriginal Australian, who gnaws his bone half bare and then flings it behind to his squaw. And the native of Terra-del-Fuego does not dine when he gets his morsel of red clay. Dining is the privilege of civilization. The rank which a people occupy in the grand scale may be measured by their way of taking their meals, as well as by their way of treating their women. The nation which knows how to dine has learnt the leading lesson of progress. It implies both the will and the skill to reduce to order, and surround with idealisms and graces, the more material conditions of human existence; and wherever that will and that skill exist, life cannot be wholly ignoble."

  Isabella Beeton's views on the cultural importance of dining were not uncommon for the era, and the manner in which she dehumanizes other races, using their differing (or rather, imagined) methods of dining as an excuse, was unfortunately also all too common. Victorian England had no problem invading other countries for their ample resources, including food and spices, and this manifested in the idea that the English were capable of using these resources far better than the races she wrote do not 'dine any more than the tiger or the vulture'. This "Orientalism" created a perception of the enlightened, civilized Occident (or West), and the backwards, uncivilized, barbaric Orient (or East), ultimately positing the "European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures" (Said).
  
  This manifested heavily in the Victorian perceptions of imported ingredients and items, which were often considered healthy or useful, as long as they were not heavily in use by or associated the people of the original culture. Take, for instance, laudanum - or rather, tincture of opium, which appears in this recipe book and was considered a useful curative substance for a variety of medical issues. Opium sale was not regulated in Victorian England until 1868, when only pharmacists were allowed to sell the substance. But, as time went on, opium became more and more associated with foreign production, especially Chinese production:
  

  Eventually, "opium became associated with Chinese opium dens; in particular, white women were thought to be at risk of being corrupted by foreigners", and the ban on opium and laudanum as an addictive substance in 1920 was led by The 1874 Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, which was "created specifically to campaign against Britain’s involvement in the opium trade with China" (Ng). While the ban on laudanum usage was entirely justified, the Orientalizing (Said) of the product contributed heavily to its danger in the eyes of the public sphere. The public and political associations between laudanum and a 'foreign' invasive substance heavily contributed to its eventual complete ban, even for medical purposes. 

This page references:

• 1 2020-12-01T14:08:02-08:00 Bibliography 54 Works Cited Page plain 2020-12-12T02:41:07-08:00
• 1 media/download-4_thumb.jpg 2020-11-22T18:04:33-08:00 Laudanum 2 Picture of Laudanum media/download-4.jpg plain 2020-12-07T16:19:41-08:00
• 1 media/laudan_thumb.jpg 2020-12-09T23:32:34-08:00 Laudanum Advert 1 an 1880s advert for laudanum media/laudan.jpg plain 2020-12-09T23:32:34-08:00