On a day trip to visit my daughter in London [17/1/2025] I had a chance to visit an exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London, just off Regent's Park. It's largely based around the college's collections of manuscript 'recipe books' - the types of documents that were mentioned in chapter 4 of A223 as a key source of medical advice within the home.
The exhibition has got an excellent website running alongside it:
https://history.rcp.ac.uk/exhibitions/healing-words
and all the recipe book manuscripts have been digitised and are available at the following link
https://archive.org/details/rcplondonmanuscripts
Trying to take photos of documents displayed in reflective, shiny cases is a bit of a lost cause ☹️ so I've just included a few that particularly seemed to link in with the module.
The image above is a record of 18th C 'inspections' of apothecaries shops in London that could be carried out by the physicians. It links directly to the module discussion of medical plurality and the tensions that could exist. Mr North in Houndsditch was 'reprimanded and admonished' for keeping a 'very bad shop'!
The Lady Sedley, her Receipt book 1686
https://archive.org/details/ms-534/page/n37/mode/2up
This manuscript illustrated how recipes might often be linked to named physicians - there is one here for Dr Stephens' water - which the exhibition noted was endorsed both by Lady Sedley, but also the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Book of medical prescriptions and cookery recipes c.18th C https://archive.org/details/ms-509/page/n29/mode/2up
The exhibition used this manuscript to highlight how these books were 'communal' documents, passed on and added to within families. The recipe for 'plague water' shows how much 'fragrance' played in ideas about counteracting this disease.
This image is of an apothecary's jar, like the ones lining the walls of the apothecary shop that was illustrated in chapter 10. It was for storing 'Oil of Swallows' - the recipe was also available and is not for animal lovers. this wasn't a euphemism.
'A Booke of Physicall Rec[eipts] Worth the Observing and Keeping: for Mrs Alice Corffilde'
https://archive.org/details/ms-232/page/n25/mode/2up
Not part of the specific exhibition, but there were also a number of portraits round the building and I thought this one was worth sharing as really good evidence of how central ancient texts remained right across this period. This portrait is of Dr Richard Mead and is dated c.1740. He was a high status physician, 'attended Queen Anne on her deathbed' (never sure that's a great advert 🤣) and was King George the second's doctor. Anyway, along with appearing entirely unphased by the appearance of the goddess of wisdom in his study clutching a portrait of the iconic William Harvey, I was drawn to his books...
The markers of a learned physician that they'd want emphasised in their portrait remained: Hippocrates, Galen and also the classical writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c.25 BC – c.50 AD)
