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We introduced Ann Hughes in Issue 12 when we quoted a
description of Christmas festivities on her husband's farm from the
diary which she kept briefly in 1796 and 1797.
On February 21st 1797, she wrote:
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"Today I didde hav to give John a dose of fissicke for hys
goode, as I hadd fered I shulde, hee hav ett toe much pigge.
I didde giv him the jouce of a lemon wyth a pinsh of ginger, and
blacke pepper ande a taste off salt, wich I didd make him drynk after
swallowing sum pepper cornes. He didd make a mity fusse sayen I shulde
kille him wyth mye messes burnin his innards but it doe always doe him
goode."
Now John bee ridde of hys bad stommick and we toe bedde earlie
reddie for nexte daye."
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Through entries in her brief diary, we catch a glimpse of the range
of skills that a young country woman was expected to bring to her
marriage. A few days before the date of this extract, she had assisted
her mother-in-law in the killing, dressing and preparation of three
pigs. She worked at harvesting and at the lambing, and was
responsible for rearing the calves and poultry She was a skilled cook and quotes many of her excellent recipes in
full in the diary. She was kind and thoughtful to those who worked for
her without once forgetting the difference of status between her husband
and herself, and their employees. When illness struck the humans on
their isolated farm and its surrounding cluster of cottages, it was to
her that everyone turned for diagnosis and nursing. From the women in
her own family she had, over the years, picked up a rich repertoire of
ancient folk cures, some of which sound plain daft to us today but also others
which were to form the basis of the treatments we use today. |
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In 1859, Isabella Beeton's "Household
Management" was published in parts over a period of some two years.
It was intended to be a complete guide to everything that a woman might
encounter in the running of her household and in the chapter headed "The
Doctor" we see that very little had changed since 1797 when Ann
Hughes was writing.
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Isabella Beeton |
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Just as Ann Hughes went to her kitchen cupboard to find
ingredients with which to mix the remedy for her husband's upset
stomach, so did the Victorian woman a century later. Mrs Beeton suggests a list of what
she calls "drugs" which every woman should have by her and
then appends recipes for a comprehensive list of prescriptions to be
kept on stand-by, ready-mixed and labelled. "If people" she
says, "knew how to act during the interval that must necessarily
elapse from the moment a medical man is sent for until he arrives, many
lives might be saved, which now, unhappily, are lost." She goes on
to explain, in great detail, how to bleed a patient, what to do with
broken limbs and how to treat an endless list of problems ranging from a
stroke to ringworm.
As we read, we suddenly realise that, bizarre as some of the
treatments seem to us today, in most cases, this was all that
was on offer. Doctors were at great distances and charged such high fees
that they were
rarely sent for until everything else had failed and the end was
inevitable. There were no public hospitals on hand, no
medics, no ambulances, and, outside large cities, few doctors and surgeons. An intelligent
woman with common sense and some rudimentary knowledge acquired from,
say, "Household Management" represented by far the best chance for
anyone who had the misfortune to fall prey to illness or accident. |
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