For years I have immersed myself in diverse stories about women, fertility and traditional medicine, frolicking in a research terrain riddled with rabbit holes. I don’t know what part of these narratives will make it into the book I am writing on this topic, but I wanted to share some of them on Rooted Resolve. So here’s the latest In Fertility!
5. Hannah
A sharp, piney scent rises up as Hannah grinds a handful of dried rosemary leaves in a wooden mortar. She is standing in a closet off of her kitchen, a narrow storage room where a wooden table and shelves hold her collection of medicines; everything she needs to practice what she calls “Physick and Chirurgery.” Wizened bundles of herbs hang from the ceiling, and ceramic jars glazed in blue, brown, green and white crowd the shelves. Each one is carefully labeled with its contents, in Latin, so she can find what she needs even in a hurry.
The pestle is smooth and familiar in her palm, and as her hands work her mind chews on the words she will use to introduce her next book. “I have been Physician and Chirurgion to my own House,” she writes, “and also many of my Neighbours, eight or ten Miles round. I think it not amiss to recite some of those Cures I have done, the Places where I have done them, and upon whom; but cannot particularly tell you with what, where the Cure is difficult; because there is in those cases a good judgment required; and I use those things in those Cases which are not Common Receipts, which may as well Kill, as Cure.”1
Hannah Woolley was a 17th century healer and one of the first Englishwomen to become a professional writer. An early modern English blend of Emily Post and Martha Stewart, she wrote hugely popular books for women on how to keep house, write letters, cook, preserve foods and cultivate good manners. She shares the proper etiquette for walking with someone politely, by keeping them on your right side. She emphasizes how women’s “modesty should be the Ornament of their beauty” and exhorts her readers to “tip your tongue with silence.” A whole section of one of her books lays out, course by course, suitable menus for each month of the year (meat and more meat, mostly, with a few “pyes” and fish thrown in; peas, artichokes, other vegetables and fruits only appear in summer and fall).2
I’ll spare you her exhaustive instructions on how a wife “ought to be subject to the Husband in all things,” which highlight the stubbornly inferior status of women in 17th century England. Yet Hannah’s medical recipes also hint at how women used their influence to wield power in less obvious ways.
Addressed “to all Young Ladies, Gentlewomen, and all Maidens whatever,” Hannah’s books offer guidance on how to carry out one of a wife’s most critical duties: care for their own health and that of their family. So she offers diverse cures for colic, worms, dropsy, consumption and gout, as well as recipes for heart-ache, ear-ache and how to “cleanse the skin of the face.” She shares “An infallible Receipt to increase Milk in Womens Breasts” that contains chicken broth, fennel and parsnips, and a remedy “To preserve the Infant, and prevent Abortion.” To speed delivery she advises “three or four drops of the distilled Oyl of Nutmegs in a spoonful of White wine.” (Nutmeg has traditionally been used to induce abortion in India, and studies suggest it may be a uterine stimulant.)*3
For “A good Medicine to provoke Terms” (better known as menstruation), Hannah notes: “Take Wormwood & Rue of each one handful, five or six pepper-corns, boil them altogether in a quart of white Wine or Malmsay; strain it and drink thereof.” In many traditional medicines wormwood (Artemisia sp.) and rue (Ruta graveolens) appear as abortifacients and emmenagogues, or substances that bring on menstruation. Scientific studies of their chemical composition suggest both can act as uterine stimulants.4
Hannah reassured her readers that “these remedies are known to be safe and effectual,” and boy did they buy it. Her books were bestsellers republished in multiple editions and translated into German. Women copied remedies carefully into their own “receipt” books, or family lists of recipes that were passed down from mothers to daughters. After her death, her work was blatantly plagiarized by men who re-titled and republished her books without permission.5
As a woman writer in a world populated by male authors, Hannah demonstrated incredible fortitude and resolve. But she also dared to break the silence she praised so highly as a womanly virtue to share what she knew of healing. She wrote about the remedies she’d observed doctors using in practice and she tapped into her own experience in “physick,” including everything she had learned working for gentlewomen of status who were healers in their own households.
Like so many women, everywhere, she was a master at threading the needle of power. She accepted the authority of her husbands and other men, including their medicinal expertise, and preserved the strict gender hierarchy of her time. Yet she also wielded significant influence in household finances, cooking and health; areas where she could either support or defy male control in subtle ways. Her determination to help other women exercise this power, too, illustrates both resilience and courage.
Did you miss In Fertility 4? Read it here!
*Please note that any medicinal plants mentioned here are just that—medicines—which can be dangerous if used without expertise.
Hannah Woolley, Supplement to the Queen-like Closet, or, a little of everything presented to all ingenious ladies and gentlewomen (London: T.R. for Richard Lownds, 1674).
David B. Goldstein, “A Guide to Ladies: Hannah Woolley’s Missing Book Emerges from the Archives,” Folger Shakespeare Library, March 19, 2019, https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/a-guide-to-ladies-hannah-woolley-missing-book; and Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman's Companion, or, a Guide to the Female Sex (London: T.J. for Edward Thomas, 1682), 56, 65, 236-240.
Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman's Companion, or, a Guide to the Female Sex (London: T.J. for Edward Thomas, 1682), A2, 240, 156, 233, 251, 254; K.M. Nadkarni, ed., Indian Materia Medica (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1908), n838; and C.L. Sakpa and D.O. Eguavoen, “Effects of alcoholic extract of Myristica fragrans (nutmeg) on pregnancy outcome in female Wistar rats,” Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management 25, no. 8 (2021): 1483-1491.
Hannah Woolley, The Ladies Delight: Or a Rich Closet of Choice Experiments and Curiosities (London: T. Rilbourn for B. Crouch, 1672), 288; Elia San Miguel, “Rue (Ruta L., Rutaceae) in Traditional Spain: Frequency and Distribution of Its Medicinal and Symbolic Applications,” Economic Botany 57, no. 2 (2003): 231-244; and Deepali Siwan, Dipali Nandave, and Mukesh Nandave, “Artemisia vulgaris Linn: an updated review on its multiple biological activities,” Future Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 8 (2022): 47.
Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman's Companion, or, a Guide to the Female Sex (London: T.J. for Edward Thomas, 1682), 254; and David B. Goldstein, “A Guide to Ladies: Hannah Woolley’s Missing Book Emerges from the Archives,” Folger Shakespeare Library, March 19, 2019, https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/a-guide-to-ladies-hannah-woolley-missing-book.