Victorian Home Remedies
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 about 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.
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 "To Make Black Medicine" and "A cure for a cough" 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."Indeed, by the mid-nineteenth century, hydropathy could be depicted as belonging to two interacting spheres, the hydro and the home, and as associated with commercial interests as well as with a mission of encouraging self-healing." (Marland and Adams).
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. In our research, the strangest, in our opinion, that we found were the practices of (Davies and Matteoni)