Medieval Medicine Sample

My mother-in-law is in town, and it's Mother's Day, so no new episode this week.

However, there is a new members' episode on the members' feed, and I thought I'd throw up a small sample because it's a lot of fun.

So, if you're already a member, just go over to the members feed, you can skip this episode.

And if you're not a member, here's a sample of what's happening over on the members feed.

We're talking a lot about medieval medicine, and it gets kind of crazy.

There is one compounded medicine that is,

the recipe of which is in this book, that is used kind of like a the catch-all for Europe.

It's like medieval paracetamol.

It's the first thing you're going to get if they decide you need a pharmaceutical and they're going to give you this and see how it goes.

Basically,

and it's called, they call it Theriac,

which is actually the base term for

treacle.

So just

have a little of this dessert.

You're going to be better.

You're going to be fine.

But basically, it's like if you create a dessert and you named it aspirin.

I mean, I guess we do have a drink called a painkiller here in America.

So it's basically that.

Do we know that they named Treacle after this?

Was this.

Yeah, or I don't we just know that that's where the word sort of transformed from.

So I'm not sure if we know like the official branding.

It may be just be that actually, let me give you the recipe for this thing and explain it.

And because I have kind of an idea where that transformation might have happened.

So give me a minute.

I can't make treacle for shit, so I can't compare the two.

I just think in the words.

But let's see.

So what they would have done is they would have compounded this extremely complex medicine.

I'm going to give you a list of ingredients.

It's not going to be all the ingredients that are written down in the recipe.

And then once you have a bunch of it compounded, then you give it out in different ways based on the type of ailment that you have.

And you mix it potentially in with other things depending on the ailment.

Oh, so like how my grandparents used TCP?

Yes.

Yeah.

So that's basically the old medieval approach to medicine.

Just, oh, do you have a headache?

Well, rub some TCP on there.

Oh, you've scraped your knee, TCP.

So the ingredients, there's over 60 ingredients listed, some of which include squills, which are the bulbs of a type of flower,

balsam wood, sweet marjoram, frankincense, and myrrh, ginger, rhubarb, St.

John's wort, fennel, asphalt, and opium.

Okay, so briefly I was on board with this and I thought it was going to make for a fantastic like potpourri, but asphalt?

I gave you a mix of both some of the crazier stuff and the more stuff like, oh yeah, I could see that.

But then there's also a bunch of just stuff where I've like,

what is this?

And then a couple of herbs that we don't even know what they are anymore.

And the list of cures of things that this cures are epilepsy, catalepsy, apoplexy, headache, stomachache, migraine, hoarseness of voice, constriction of the chest, bronchitis, asthma, spitting of blood, jaundice, dropsy, pneumonia, colic, intestinal wounds, nephritis, the stone, and choler.

The stone?

It induces menstruation and expels the dead fetus.

It cures leprosy, smallpox, intermittent chills, and other chronic illnesses.

And it's good against all poisons, the bites of snakes and reptiles, clears up every failing of the senses, and strengthens the heart, the brain, and the liver.

Once this thing is mixed,

it can be given as a pill.

So they did press things into pills or mixed with other ingredients depending on the illness.

So it was given with an elixir.

They say give it with an elixir of hyssop if you're dealing with jaundice.

um

uh it's another plant okay um mix it with wine for an abortion um asthma if nothing else the wine's gonna help

right um

asthma if it was formed into cough drops by combining it with tragacanth i think that might be the reference to the treacle because the tragacanth is like a sweet gum you're getting from like a tree okay and so if you're uh eating theriac cough drops basically essentially that would become like the sweet um medicine so we went from medieval Ricola to treacle.

Yeah, I kind of suspect that that's what that was, was that

you're given your treacle medicine.

It's sweet, it's kind of sticky.

And so,

that slowly transformed into this sticky dessert that got you real high because there's opium in it.

I didn't have time to chase this one down.

I just found that and I was like, that's fascinating.

I decided to share it.

If anyone actually knows how that etymology happened, please share.

Are we going gonna do a member special where we make medieval treacle?

No, this is dangerous.

Some of these ingredients are illegal, and that's this is kind of like I wanted to bring this so that we could see because a lot of this again seems really solid and basic and rational until you get really down to the ingredients and you're like, What do you mean you're mixing opium with asphalt and giving it to people for an abortion and headaches?

Um,

what is going on over there?

Um,

a lot of the plants mentioned in here would have some effects on the body, which also means they're poisonous, by the way.

Please don't go eat them.

Like the squills, the bulbs of these like really pretty blue flowers, they will thin the muscus.

So like it's like a medieval mucinax.

But if you have too much, it will also impact the heart.

So it has a biological effect.

Dosage would be real important.

But, you know, not having access to our modern medicines, it may

have done things and helped people.

If you had a skilled physician who knew exactly how to apply this to the right thing.

Aaron Powell, Jr.

So they were kind of taking the Snorri-Sterluson approach that he had to Norse mythology, but for medicine, it sounds like where it's like just put everything into a sausage and hope for the best.

I don't, I think it's probably more logical than that because the concept of compound medicine makes much more sense than compound mythology.

But

they're the way they're going to be going in completely opposite directions, a lot of these things, right?

But they said that that was kind of their idea:

they noticed that some of these illnesses seem to be compound illnesses where you had both hot and cold things happening at the same time.

And so, you'd want medicines that had heating and cooling, and that's how they're thinking of it.

And so, my guess is that when these compounded recipes get that long, it's because they're chasing down this logic trail.

Right.

And if nothing else, this may have had a pretty consistent painkiller effect.

At least the opium would have done that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'll also notice how complex that is.

And one thing that they did find over at that hospital site was they found traces of plants that had to be imported.

So all the way up in Edinburgh, they are importing things specifically just for medicine.

And these recipes are complex and have plants from all over the place that would have had to be brought together and compounded together to be complete.

So there is a pharmaceutical trade that is happening.

Do we have any idea how reliable any of that is like on those trade routes?

Because like, at least in the States, if you're getting like any kind of herbs or whatever, the chances that you are going to get what is on that pill bottle are not great.

That's in modern times.

Yeah, well, that depends on how you're getting it, right?

So if you get it in pill form, it's hard to check.

Yeah.

But.

And from there, we go into a lot more cures.

We end up talking about our sources, where this information comes into it.

Turns out that Henry of Huntington was one of our major sources for understanding medieval medicine during this period.

So it's very interesting material.

I think you'd like it.

And if you'd like to listen to the rest of the episode, please sign up for membership over at the BritishHistorypodcast.com.

And we'll see you next week.