Anglo-Saxon Herbal Remedies- class notes

A class given by Muirenn ingen Morgair at War of the Trillium, A.S. 50

 

Egypt, Greece, and the Classical Tradition of Medicine In Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia 

 

Illness was seen as a manifestation of a god’s anger or possession by demons or ghosts, as shown by the Ebers and Hearst papyri. The goal of the healer was to appease the god through sacrifices or drive out the possessing demon by applying or getting the patient to ingest substances which the demon found repugnant (like feces).



Ancient Greeks, according to the epics and oldest works of literature, believed that the gods sent disease, but it could also come about spontaneously. Apollo and Artemis could both kill or heal with their arrows, and Zeus could blind, send plagues and make women barren. Athena, as well as Leto, Artemis and Apollo, would heal battle wounds.

During the 5th century healing cults started to appear, and the cult of Asclepius, son of Apollo, was the most influential. It spread to the Aegean, Asia Minor and Egypt, with more than 400 shrines and sanctuaries. Some were still active into the 6th century CE.

Greek rational medicine started to develop with the natural philosophers, who looked for the reasons behind events and occurrences. Anaximenes taught that clouds ‘squeezed out’ rain and lightning, and Anaximander taught that the sun was bigger than the earth, but it looked smaller because it was far away. These groundbreaking discoveries began to gain ground in Athens because of the massive social upheaval brought about by the devastating plague which hit during the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BCE). The people lost their faith in the gods and that opened the gate for scientific thought to take center stage.

Hippocrates of Cos (the author of the Hippocratic oath still sworn by doctors today), is credited with a massive body of medical writing, although it is most likely that the majority of the works were written at the medical schools on the Greek islands of Cos and Cnidus. The belief in the four bodily humours, as taught by Hippocrates, which regulated health and disease (blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile) wasn’t perfect, but it was a more testable hypothesis. Plus, Hippocratic doctors preferred to help patients avoid sickness through proper diet and exercise.

In the later 3rd century BCE, doctors in Alexandria, Egypt took internal medicine to heights of knowledge not surpassed until the Renaissance. These studies were supported by the Ptolemies, the ruling family who were patrons of art and science. Ptolemy I (367283 BCE), the former general of Alexander the Great, founded the Museum (house of the Muses), which included the Great Library. The medical school there continued to do dissections (and even the occasional vivisection) until the time that Galen studied medicine in the 2nd century CE (d.200CE). The Greeks did not do this due to a longstanding cultural and religious taboo against ‘desecrating’ the dead (the origin of the word hubris ). What knowledge they had was gathered
from examinations of wounds sustained in war and during live surgery.

It was during this period that the most influential herbals were written, which were used as reference material up until the premodern age, and weren’t fully done away with until the 18th century.

Anglo-Saxon England

The Books

The Old English Herbarium is a collected work of a few classical medical texts on herbalism and
healing, translated into AngloSaxon and bound into one volume, dating to about 1000 CE. This book contains terse recipes describing plants and how to prepare them, and what conditions they are good for. In the whole work about 185 plants are named, along with prescriptions for ailments. This book was the first translation of a medical work into another language than Latin or Greek, also it was the first time that different medical works were combined into one work. After the Norman conquest Latin was once again the only language of science in England, but the AngloSaxon works were still used and annotated and glossed in Latin, Old English, and early modern English.

Some of the other texts that make up this herbal are books by Dioscorides, PseudoApuleius, Sectus Placitus Papyriensis, and PseudoMusa.

Dioscorides of Anazarbos (c.50-70CE), ‘ De materia medica ’ and ‘Liber medicinae ex herbis
feminis ’ (On medical materials and The medical book of herbs for women).
He was a Greek physician in the Roman army. This work was translated into Latin by the 6th century and Arabic by the 9th. According with Greek tradition there were no chants or prayers or superstitious practices along with the prescriptions.

PseudoApuleius, ‘ Herbarium ’.
This is an anonymous collection from the 4th or 5th century CE from the Mediterranean area. In Latin an herbarius is an herb gatherer and herbalist, while an herbarium is a place where herbs are grown, also a book with drawings of herbs and notes about them.

PseudoMusa, ‘ De herba vettonica ’, and ‘ De taxone ’ (On bettony, and On badgers, ie. how to
use badger parts to heal people).

Sectus Placitus Papyriensis, ‘ De medicus ex animalibus ’ (how to use animals for medicine).

Bald’s Læcboc (ie. the Leechbook of Bald)
This is the oldest surviving medical manuscript produced in England. It dates from the early 10th
century and is made up of four parts.

Lacnunga (‘Remedies’)
A 9th century herbal which uses incantations as a major part of the remedies.

Doctors ( læce ), Herbsingers (wyrtgælstre), and Monks

 

Greek medicine arrived in England with the Roman army doctors, and using the extensive trade network they were able to supply most of the herbs needed. After the Roman period the diversity of many kinds of garden and healing plants drops off dramatically, due to the disruption of trade and the various waves of invaders and settlers.

In Celtic lands the traditional healers were the Druids, who underwent a 12 year apprenticeship, but their teachings were largely oral traditions, and only survived unbroken in Ireland until the arrival of Christianity in the 4th century, and the Christian monks didn’t write them down.

In England and on the Continent they were conquered and subsumed first by the Romans.

In pagan Teutonic/Germanic thought diseases were caused by flying venoms, the evil nines, worms, and elfshot. Wodan was the chief god of health and good luck (also known as Wotan, and Odin). According to myth he smashed the evil serpent of death into nine pieces. These nine pieces produced nine venoms, which flew about causing disease. Also, dwarves and elves liked to cause trouble and make people sick or feeble. We don’t know much about the native traditions of these tribes, but sometimes women were buried with little boxes full of healing herbs (Allen, D. and Gabrielle Hatfield, Medicinal Plants in folk Tradition: An ethnobotany of Britain and Ireland, Cambridge, 2004).

In one book (Leechcraft: Early English charms, plant lore and healing, Hockwoldcum Wilton, Norfolk, 2000), the author, Stephen Pollington, mentions that healing women were called plant singers (wyrtgælstre). This is the only attestation for this word, but with the above evidence it does make a good correspondence. However, the only people writing anything down for posterity were the monks, and they avoided references to pagan traditions or practices.

In some of the other texts like the Lacnunga (AngloSaxon for ‘remedies’’) from the 9th century, and The L æ chboc (leechbook, healing book) of Bald from the late 10th century, Roman, Celtic and Teutonic healing charms and incantations were combined with the scientific medical texts from the Mediterranean. Often, the incantations would be glossed over with Christian prayers.

Bishop Ælfric of Eynsham and Wulfstan Archbishop of York were vocal proponents of herbs being picked with a proper Christian prayer. Which obviously means that it wasn’t happening as much as they would have liked.
“We have some medical books, but the foreign ingredients we find prescribed in them are unknown to us and difficult to obtain.” ~ Cyneheard, Bishop of Winchester wrote to Lull, Bishop of Mainz in 754 CE.

Monasteries and Nunneries were a major source of Greek medical texts. The monks and nuns copied the manuscripts, ran infirmaries, and kept gardens to grow and collect their own herbs. Their gardens were walled, and so created microclimates which were more favourable to importing and growing plants from warmer climates. Also, the climate experienced a brief warming trend from the 9th 13th centuries. The monasteries were in more populated areas, and the Herbarium of PseudoApuleius was in wide distribution. The monasteries, particularly, were very global in outlook; they brought in monks from all over the areas of Christian influence. Also, the most learned monks, who were from Ireland at this time, were known for their wandering feet, and they carried books with them wherever they went. In the original plan for the Celtic monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland we have a list of the plants which the monks thought to be most useful for an infirmary gardenkidney beans, savoury, roses, mint, cumin, lovage, fennel, tansy/costmary, lily, sage, rue, flag iris, pennyroyal, fenugreek and rosemary. Also, in their version of an herbal they included some alpine plants native to that area. St. Benedict wrote an entire chapter about how to care for wounded or sick
brothers. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries between 1536 and 1540 many AngloSaxon works were lost.

Visigothic and Ostrogothic law codes, 10th century Welsh laws and Norse medicine all show a familiarity with classical Greek herbal medicine.

Medical practice in AngloSaxon England was a complex affair, consisting of apprenticeships, word of mouth, traditional healing practices, and books.

Humoural medicine didn’t really catch on in England until about the 11th century. The value of herbs and other foods weren’t for the healing of specific conditions, but to correct imbalances in the body. A gap started to form between practice and theory, with humoural medicine being taught at the prestigious medical schools (and then the universities after that), and herbals and traditional medicine being used by local healers.

Common cooking herbs and garden plants mentioned in the Old English Herbal

Garden and watercress- hair falling out, head sores, dandruff and itching, sore body, swellings, and warts
Chamomile- eye pain
Garlic- womb pain
Rosemary- toothache,illness and itching, liver and abdominal disease, fresh wounds (which may not have come to England until c.1440 according to one source)
Asparagus- pain or swelling in the bladder, toothache, sore veins, to get rid of spells of ill-will
Blackberries- earache, menstruation, heart pain, fresh wounds
Coriander- worms, so a woman can more easily give birth
Basil- headache, eye pain
Mint- impetigo and pimples, bad scars and wounds
Dill- genital itching and pain for both genders, headache
Sweet marjoram- gout, liver disease, asthma, coughs
Fennel- coughand asthma, bladder pain
Parsley- snakebite, nerve pain
Cabbage- all swellings and gout, pain in the side
Carraway/cumin- stomach ache, asthma, snakebite, tenderness and heat in the abdomen, nosebleed

Uncommon herbs and flowers

Rue- nosebleeds, swellings, stomach ache, pain and swelling of eyes, forgetfulness, dimness of eyes, headache
Pennyroyal- abdominal and stomach pain, genital itching, tertian fever, stillborn child in a woman’s abdomen
Chervil- stomachache
St. John’s wort- stimulating urination and menstruation, quartan fever, swelling and aching legs
FlowersGladiolus- strange carbuncles, fractured skull and poisoned bones
Asphodel- swollen abdomen and abdominal flux
White poppy- pain in temples, sleeplessness
Narcissus- sores which grow
Iris- bladder pain and cannot pee, spleen pain, abdominal and breast pain
Small snapdragon- soreness and swelling of eyes
Yarrow- blow from something iron, toothache, wounds, swellings, difficulty peeing, cold wound, rash on head or swelling face, hard veins, bad digestion, intestinal and abdominal pain, hiccoughs, headache, a bite from a spalangius snake and other snakes, bite from a mad dog
Lily- snakebite, swellings
Campion- forall snakes
White heliotrope- allsnake bites, anus worms, warts
Larkspur- quartan fever
Peony- tertian and quartan fever, if stormy weather troubles one while rowing, cramps and tremors
Sweet violet- hardening of the stomach, fresh and old wounds
Viper’s bugloss- snakebite, sore thighs

Plants also used for dyeing

Madder- for everything that produces sores, aching legs and broken bones, all body pain
Alkanet- tertian and quartan fever, asthma, bad burns

Wild plants that you might recognize

Common plantain- headache, stomach pain, abdominal pain, swollen stomach, anal bleeding, wounds, to soften the stomach, snakebite, intestinal worms, hard place on the body, quartan fever, gout, sore tendons, tertian fever, two day fever, infected wounds, swollen feet on a trip, sore on nose or cheeks, mouth injuries, bite from a mad dog, daily internal weakness
Buttercup- lunacy, darkened sores
Dock- swellings on the genitals, body stiffness
Wild orchid- eye pain and painful wounds
Wild teasel- liver sickness, poison, dropsy
Burdock- wounds, snakebite, fevers, ulcerous sores on wounds, abdominal pain, bite from a
mad dog, fresh wounds
Wild strawberry- pain in the spleen, asthma, abdominal pain
Marshmallow- gout, accumulations of diseased matter growing on the body
Horsetail- dysentery, coughing up blood
Horehound- head cold and violent cough, stomach ache, worms around the anus, sore joints and swellings, tasting poison, scabs and impetigo, lung disease, every body stiffness
Thistle- sore throat (tie around the throat)
Black nightshade- swellings, earache, toothache, bloody nose
Scotch thistle- move intestines and urine, lung disease, any evil
Nettle- chilled wounds, swellings, if any part of the body is struck, pain in the thighs, putrefied wounds, menstruation, so cold will not bother you
Ivy- stones in the bladder, headache, pain in the spleen

Modern doctors and researchers have studied some of the herbal prescriptions, and a few that they studied would have helped in some way for the described ailments, and were mostly “as good as anything available up to the end of the 19th century”.(p.89 Van Arsdall.) Copper salts 1 and honey are both antibacterial, as well as onion and garlic. When mixed with wine or gall it would have greatly helped with eye infections, as prescribed in Bald’s Leechbook, the Herbarium, and De materia medica. And without the knowledge of microbes, bacteria and transmission vectors disease and ill health could very well have looked like flying venoms and elfshot.

Some Terms:

Simples vs. compounds- A simple is a remedy that uses only one herb or ingredient. A compound uses more than one.
wyllan- to gently boil or simmer
seođan- (seethe)simmer or infuse
nafolan- (belly button)the polite word for anus used in context with intestinal worms, which is
where they appear
infusion- extracting plant material or flavours in a solvent such as water, alcohol or oil

Some Recipes:

NB: I do not, personally, recommend trying any of these remedies. They are offered for historical interest only. Please consult a physician for any medical complaints.

Watercress-
i. If a person’s hair is falling out, take the juice of the plant and put it in the nose. The hair will grow.
ii. For head sores, that is dandruff and itching, take the seeds of this plant and goose grease, and mix them together. It draws the whiteness of the dandruff off the head.
iii. For swellings, take the same plant, mix it with oil, and lay it on the swellings. Take the leaves of the same plant and lay them on also.
iv. For warts, take the same plant and yeast, mix them together. Lay this on the wart, and it will soon be taken away

Chamomile-
i. For eye pain, let the person pick the plant called camemelon or camomile before sunrise.
When picking it, the person should say he is picking it for white specks in the eye and for eye pain, then take the juice and apply it to the eyes. (picking plants before the sun is hot is customary to retain oils and saps dissipated by the heat, and talking to plants before picking them was seen as a sign of respect)

Madder-
This plant, called ostriago , or madder, grows around graveyards, on mounds, and on the walls of houses that stand against hills.
i. For all soreness that afflicts people, take the plant we call ostriago , pound it, and lay it on the sore. As we said earlier, it will completely heal every painful thing that develops on the body.
If you want to pick this plant, you should be pure, and you should pick it before sunrise in the month of July.

Wild strawberry-
This plant, which is called fraga or wild strawberry, grows in shady places, in cultivated spots, and on hills. [the Latin word fraga is where we get the English word fragrant… ie. it smells lovely like a wild strawberry]
i. For pain of the spleen, take the juice of the same plant we call wild strawberry, and honey. Give it to drink, and it will help in a wonderful way.
ii. The juice of this same plant taken mixed with honey and pepper helps many who have asthma or abdominal pain.

Horehound-
i. for a cold in the head and for heavy coughing, take the plant the Greeks call prassion , the Romans marubium , and the English horehound, and simmer it in water. Give it to drink whenever the coughing is heavy, and it will help wonderfully.
ii. For a stomachache, take the juice of this same plant and give it to drink. It takes away a stomachache. If fever bothers the person, give the same plant well diluted in water, and it will restore health.
iii. For worms around the anus, take equal amounts by weight of the maribium [sic] plant, wormwood, and lupin, and simmer them two or three times in sweetened water and wine. Put this on the anus, and it will kill the worms.
iv. For painful and swollen joints, take the same plant, burn it to ashes, put it on the sore, and it will quickly heal.
v. If someone tastes poison, take the juice of this plant, simmer it in aged wine, and drink it. Quickly it will be better.
vi. For scabs and impetigo, take the same plant, simmer it in water, and wash the body with it where there are sores. It removes the scabs and impetigo.
vii. For lung disease, take the same plant and simmer it in honey. give it to eat, and the person will be cured in a wonderful manner.
iix. For all stiffness in the body, take the same plant and pound it well with grease. Put this on the soreness, and it will cure it in a wonderful way.

Woad-
The Greeks call this plant isatis , the Romans aluta , and the English ad serpentis morsum . [This last Latin was a copying mistake in the original document]
i. For snakebite [ie. ad serpentis morsum], take the leaves of the plant that the Greeks call isatis and pound them with water. Lay them on the bite. It will heal and the sore will disappear.

Some odes, poems, spells and incantations:

Erce, Erce, Erce, eorƥan modor,
geunne ƥe se alwalda, ece drihten,
æcera wexendra and wridendra,
æcniendra and elmendra,
sceafta hehre, scima wæstma,
and ƥæra bradan berewæstma,
and ƥæra hwitan hwætewæstma,
and ealra eorƥan wæstma.
Erce, erce, erce, mother of earth/ may the omnipotent eternal Lord grant you/ fields growing and things/ flourishing and bountiful/ bright shafts of milletcrops/ and of broad barleycrops/ and of white wheatcrops/ and of all the crops on earth.
(Ed. E.V.K. Dobbie, AngloSaxon minor poems, vol.6, pp.11718, NY:1942)

Dea sancta Tellus, rerum naturae pareus, quae cuncta generas, et regeneras sidus, quod sola
prestas gentibus vitala…
Oh blessed goddess Earth, Mother of nature, you who incessantly create and sustain all living beings, as you bring forth from your womb all things into life…
(Ed. F. Bucheler and A. Riese. Anthologia latina sive poesis latinae supplementum, Leipzig:18941926,
no.4)

Ond ƥu, Wegbrade, wyrta modor,
eastan opene, innan mihtigu;
ofer đy cræte curran, ofer đy cwene reodan,
ofer đy bryde byrodedon, ofer đy fearras fnærdon;
eallum ƥu ƥon wiđstonde 7 wiđstundest.
Swa đu wiđstonde attre 7 onflyge
7 ƥæm lađan ƥe geond lond feređ
And you, Greater Plantain (way bread), mother of herbs,/open to the east, powerful within;/ carts creaked over you, women rode over you,/ young women trampled over you, oxen bellowed over you;/ you withstood all of them and roared back./ So may you withstand poison and flyingdisease,/ and the malignancy that travels round the land.
(From the Lacnunga Nine Herbs Charm )

Resources:

General Online

http://wyrtig.com/index.htm
Digitized books and excerpts

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_585

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly/unc.htm

Books used for these notes

Health and healing from the medieval garden . Ed. Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide.
Boydell:Suffolk, UK, 2008.

Longrigg, James. Greek medicine from the Heroic to the Hellenistic age: a source book .
Routledge:NY, 1998.

Van Arsdall, Anne. Medieval Herbal Remedies: the Old English Herbarium and AngloSaxon medicine . Routledge:NY, 2002.

Books mentioned by the authors in these texts which I want to read eventually

Allen, D. and Gabrielle Hatfield, Medicinal Plants in folk Tradition: An ethnobotany of Britain and Ireland, Cambridge, 2004

Filotas, Bernadette. Pagan survivals, superstitions and popular culture in Early Medieval
pastoral literature . Toronto:2005.

Jolly, Karen Louise. Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf charms in context . Chapel Hill:1996.


Pollington, Stephen. Leechcraft: Early English charms, plant lore and healing, Hockwoldcum Wilton, Norfolk, 2000

Witchcraft and magic in Europe: The Middle Ages , eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, Philadelphia:2002.