A Book of Simples

Transcriber’s note: table of contents added by the transcriber.
A BOOK OF SIMPLES
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF ORIGINAL MS.
“ Delirious persons here a cure may find, To stem the phrensy and to calm the mind! ”
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON AND CO. Ltd. 100, SOUTHWARK STREET, S.E.
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
The original of this little book was found in the library of a distinguished Essex antiquary: the document has unfortunately no history, but from its appearance and comprehensive character it must have been the still-room book of some manor house or homestead of standing.
The manuscript is a folio composed entirely of vellum, bound in green, with a conventional design in gold: the binding of this book is a reduced facsimile of the original. The writing is in the hand of several persons: the spelling and absence of punctuation are here reproduced in all their original quaintness. The book has been submitted to experts, who are of opinion that it covers a period of some fifty years, terminating about the middle of the eighteenth century.
The condition of many of the rural districts of England in the eighteenth century and the almost impassable state of the roads are brought home to us by a writer in “The Gentleman’s Magazine” (1757), in the following description: “It took my horse up to the belly the second step he took on the road, and had I not dismounted and clambered up some bushes I had been lodged there for a season.” The isolation of the country in those days is almost inconceivable; the difficulties of travel were immense, and a survival of feudal legislation tied the labourer to the soil. Thus we may look upon the manor or farmhouse, with its retainers, as a detached social unit, and, in a sparsely populated country, almost a state in itself.
It is not difficult to form a picture of the lady of the house: amid her other duties she dispensed doles and charity to the poor around her. Through her knowledge of simples she was also “simpler” of all the ills that flesh is heir to, not only in the case of man, but also of beast. The wisdom and observation of a long procession of forebears are summed up in the recipes gathered in this book.