Take unicorn horn and bones from the heart of a deer, add 100 leaves of gold, and you’re well on your way to a potent potion. Though “potion” is perhaps not the right term, as former library intern Summer Mainstone-Cotton advises me as we discuss the Curious Cures exhibition at Cambridge’s University Library. She’s right: the exhibition is a lot more than a bunch of hocus pocus, beating an intriguing path through medieval medicine and providing interesting insights, particularly on female healthcare.
Summer’s own research focused on pregnancy and the reproductive cycle. Female health remains a developing field of medicine, with the British Medical Association continuing to tackle the problems of the gender health gap. Received wisdom, or perhaps learned ignorance, would have us believe that female health was taboo in the medieval world. Yes, women were increasingly marginalised as medical practitioners, but the exhibition makes clear that female health was an important area of medical inquiry. It showcases remedies to treat everything from amenorrhea (lack of menstruation) and female infertility, to lactation insufficiency and dystocia (difficult labour).
“The exhibition makes clear that female health was an important area of medical inquiry”
These remedies have been helpfully translated from their original Arabic, Latin, and Old English, written on red-lettered cards placed between the beautiful manuscripts that make up the exhibition. One such remedy advises, to treat a lack of menstruation: “mix honey, senna, and ginger with wine to form a paste, then smear it on the naval”. Senna makes sense – as a laxative, medieval healers must have thought its ability to move bowels could also stimulate menstrual flow. Honey also made sense given that the exhibition elsewhere tells us it was used to treat constipation.
Many women today experience menstrual constipation, and scientists today continue to investigate the link between menstruation and gastrointestinal motor function. If menstruation could inhibit bowel movement, then there was a logic in the medieval hypothesis that the movement of the bowels could trigger menstruation. But interestingly, Summer tells me such treatments may also have been early means of abortion, the start of a period thought to terminate a pregnancy.
“Scientists today continue to investigate the link between menstruation and gastrointestinal motor function”
Wine often makes headlines today for its medicinal properties, and our medieval ancestors were keen on it too. To treat female infertility: “burn the womb of a hare, mix the ashes with wine, and drink”. But don’t imagine that women alone bore the burden of infertility. Medieval people understood men could be infertile, with Summer telling me of a treatment to diagnose which member of a couple was the cause of the infertility. As for the wine used to treat infertility, it was not just to make the ashes easier to swallow. The mixture was also to be placed beneath the woman during intercourse to increase fertility. Wine as such was a ‘medicine’ in and of itself.
This remedy also shows how people understood corporeal bodies. Animal parts were commandeered and attempts made to infuse their properties into humans through physical contact or ingestion. It made sense to our medieval ancestors that the fecundity of the common rabbit could be transferred to an infertile woman. This is not so hare-brained (pardon the pun!) – recent successful womb transplants show that our medieval ancestors were not completely off the mark in thinking that a healthy womb, albeit that of a rabbit, could be the source of restoring fertility to an infertile woman.
Human bodily fluids also found their way into treatments. Men’s urine treated scabies, and women’s milk treated warts, just one of the reasons perhaps why lactation insufficiency was a concern in medieval medicine. Poor milk production continues to affect many women today, with doctors recently designating it a public health concern. To treat lactation insufficiency: “crush verbena and fennel, mix their juice with ale, and drink”. Again, there may be something in this. Fennel is thought to act like oestrogen in the body, and we know oestrogen prepares the mammary glands for milk production. Medieval healers were not completely bonkers.
“Humans have long sought ways to tap into the magic that is science”
Herbs were generally important in medieval medicine, with oregano treating pestilence and cumin curing bloodshot eyes. But the sleeplessness that may have caused bloodshot eyes was treated using an altogether different ‘cure’ – magic. To treat sleeplessness: “write ‘+ysmael + profindel + ysmael + adiuro vooz per angelum ut soporet homo iste N’ on a laurel leaf, place under the person’s head, then feed them lettuce and ale”. If this actually worked, it was likely the depressant nature of alcohol that did the trick. But, don’t dismiss the lettuce too quickly. A 2017 study found that romaine lettuce can literally put you to sleep!
We see such charms used also to aid childbirth. To treat labour complications: “write onto a woman’s belly: ‘Maria bore Jesus + Anna [bore] Maria […] sator + arepo + tenet + opera + rotas’. Then take a swig of dittany leaf” . This too should not be dismissed as nonsense. As Summer suggests in our conversation, there is something to the rhythmic nature of charms. Their recitation could inadvertently control breath and invoke a meditative state, which perhaps made childbirth easier. This is not all too dissimilar to the “hee, hee, hoo” breathing techniques taught in modern childbirth classes.
As such, medieval medicine may not have been as mad as popular culture would have us believe. They thought deeply about human health, including female health, appealing to flora, fauna, and even the occult to treat ailments. However, Dr James Freeman, the exhibition’s curator, discourages taking lessons directly from medieval medicine – their worldview was “quite different” from ours, he reminds me. However, there is surely something encouraging in knowing we have been thinking about these things for such a long time. Then, as now, humans have long sought ways to tap into the magic that is science, to free us from disease, or failing that, at least to distract us from the accompanying discomfort and despair.
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