English physician's manuscript recipe book

This mid-eighteenth century physician’s notebook, most likely English in origin, contains medicinal and food receipts, prescriptions, and contemporary treatments for several common illnesses.

The initial author of this mid-eighteenth-century manuscript recipe book is unknown, though the neat English hand which fills the first part of the volume and a citation from "ye London Journal" (page 44) suggest that the author was a physician and the place of origin was England. Writing in a second and third hand suggests later entries from others who may have inherited this book. There are a total of 144 pages, twenty of which are blank. The receipts are mainly medicinal with prescriptions for treating various illnesses and there are a few food receipts in the back of the book.

The first page gives a list of "medicinal characters," such as AF (Aqua Fortis) or the astrological symbols, such as Jupiter (Tin). Five index pages follow, citing page numbers to the receipts and prescriptions for treatment of conditions and illnesses (mainly human). Conditions include "bite of a mad dog" and "hooping cough." The list of medicinal characters and the first nineteen pages are written in a neat, early English hand; page one is titled "Some rarer & choicer Receipts (wc have been recommended unto me) out of Bates his "disponsatory." Receipts in this section bear Latin titles, such as "Pulvis Vermifugus" (a worm powder). This section includes entries on Agues, Eyes, and Obstructions of Liver and Spleen.

Medicinal receipts and prescriptions continue through the volume, recorded in at least two different hands. These entries include instructions on how to treat stomach pain, insomnia, and consumption, or conditions such as "Tremors of Old Men," which prescribes "Take peacocks dung 3 drams compound Peony-water 6 ounces fore Spoonfuls at once" (p. 27). The instructions for how "To make a small Mead" (p. 23) face an entry recorded in a different hand on the opposite page, "My Mothers way of Brewing." Several days of a family illness are recorded on page 46, beginning "28 Jan 1766 my dear w[ife] lost abt 6 o. blood."