In July 1563 surgeon Robert Henderson was awarded 20 merks by Edinburgh’s town council for “healing” a man whose hands had been cut off, a couple who’d been run through the body with swords, and a woman who’d suffocated and lain dead in her grave for two days.
More sage advice from auld Greenock (1895)
In the 17th century in Kilmartin, Skye, “melancholy and low spirits” were treated by the blacksmith. The patient was held face up on the anvil while the smith wound up with his biggest hammer. He’d swing it down and deliberately miss as close as he could. Spirits lifted! It was said of the blacksmith “he ends in a Faint, else he Cure the Patient of all diseases…”
Tippermalloch’s Receipts, or The Poor Man’s Physician was a popular self-help book in early 1700s Scotland. Here’s some highlights from 6 chapters.
CW: gross and often cruel medicine
DEAFNESS/EAR PAIN CURES
a fig turned inside out, or bacon, or one’s own urine inserted into the ear. Have a good sneeze. Milk, “squirted into the ear, from the breast” “Ants’ eggs and onion juice dropt in doth cure the oldest deafness”
NOSEBLEEDS
Suction cups applied to feet. Wiggling the little finger on the side if the bleed. Icy water thrown in face at random intervals. Tie a bean/coin to bridge of nose. Cold vinegar on the scrotum. Nettles on forehead. Mints in both nostrils.
EYE PROBLEMS
Glaucoma? pour on hot pigeons blood. Bloodshot? Pigeon blood, or egg yolks and wine mix. Jaundiced? Pour on vinegar. Inflamed or sore eyes? Apply roast apple, or goat meat, or tobacco butter. All work better if you dab nettle juice on your temples.
KIDNEYS/BLADDER ETC.
Kidney or bladder stones: fried onions smeared on urethra, or open veins in anus, or eat as much sugar as you can, or drink burnt eggshells in turpentine. Inject warm milk directly into bladder for the pain. Eat hazelnuts before you eat meat.
FOR PISSING
Too much/involuntary? Drink burnt hare brains and testicles, or it’s dung, or burnt snail shells, or powdered burnt mice. Can’t piss? Apply beaten radishes, or fried onions, or raw onions. “Outwardly a cow-turd does wonders” Pissing blood? Wear lead plates in pants.
WOMEN’S DISEASES
Heavy periods? Drink nettle juice. Apply nettle poultice or sponge soaked in vinegar to “the Privaties”, or stand over a pan of boiling vinegar. “Scare” a prolapsed uterus “back up” using mice or frogs, or brandish a hot iron or foul-smelling material.
I’ll definitely do another round of Tippermalloch Receipts in the future, but you can read the whole thing here: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-2761887R-bk…
Tayler’s Ready Doctor, printed Falkirk 1785, was a popular self-help book full of medical advice. Here is how to promote, discourage, or cure “beardiness”
Tayler’s Ready Doctor is really full of gems. Here’s another:
In the 19th century, many believed in “maternal impression”– the idea that women could “mark” a fetus during pregnancy.
In 1817, when Galloway man John Woods said he wouldn’t accept paternity unless the child had his name writ large on its face, apparently…
T.E.C. (1976) The power of maternal impression causes the alleged father’s name to appear in legible letters in his infant son’s right eye. Pediatrics 58(6): 901
In the 19th century, many Scots would not eat *any* fresh vegetables, unripe berries, or new potatoes in case they caught “the Scotch cholera” which was supposed fatal in less than a day.
(in reality it was bacterial gastroenteritis)
In April 1650, Brechin woman Catharin Walker was accused of witchcraft, for, among other things, booting a man in the balls so hard he died.
Her accusers also claimed:
She had a meeting with the devil in the form of a cat and made a pact with him
She had kicked another man in the groin (and that he also died)
She had poisoned cattle and children
She had used incantations to summon the devil in her prison cell
She had brought some sort of pestilence upon Brechin.
While we know that the man who died post-booting was named Beattie, the records of the Brechin presbytery don’t say what Catharin’s fate was. No commission to try her has been found in the records, so she may have been acquitted. However, she was found by witchpricker John Kincaid to have had the “Devil’s mark” on her, and she had at some point confessed to murder–not easy things to shake and unlikely to get you let out of jail.*
*thanks to Louise Yeoman and Ciaran Jones for this insight on Catharin’s fate.
Sarah Dalrymple, Countess of Dumfries (1654-1744) was said to have had suffered from a “distemper” that caused her to fly across the room and around the garden. Was it witchcraft? None could say. Was she definitely 100% flying about? Robert Wodrow was absolutely certain.
That Sarah could fly was apparently common knowledge at the time and after her death. In a pasquil (a satirical poem) lampooning the Stairs family, a poet had this to say about her:
The airie fiend, for Stairs hath land in Air,
verse from “Satyre on the Familie of Stairs”
Possess another daughter for ther share,
Who, without wings, can with her rumple flye.
No middling-foull did ever mount so high;
Can skip o’er mountains, and o’er steiples soare,
A way to petticoats ne’re known before.
Her flight’s not useless, though she nothing catch;
She’s good for letters when they neid despatch.
When doors and windows shutt, cage her at home,
She’le play the shittlecock through all the roume,
This high flown lady never trades a stair,
To mount her wyse Lord’s castles in the air–
Maidment, J. (ed) (1868) A Book of Scotish Pasquils 1568-1715 [sic]. William Paterson, Edinburgh. pg.179
Wodrow, R. (1842) Analecta: or, Materials for a history of remarckable providences; mostly relating to Scotch ministers and Christians. Vol. 2. Maitland Club, Glasgow pg.4
Thank you to @Flitcraft for letting me know about the pasquil.
n. the water shrew
In Caithness, it was thought that its breath could kill a cow at 100 paces and it could poison you just by looking at you. The cure was to make a soup from its head.