Browse Lady Johanna's Recipe Book, where remedies for the plague, The King's Evil and Canker of the Breast are interspersed with curatives for "being bit by a mad dog" and popular seventeenth century tonics such as "Gilberts Water". Read the poignant letters between Lady Johanna and her cousin, Anne St.John Wilmot, Lady Rochester, as they exchange medicines to try to save the dying John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.
The women of the manor handled much of the wellbeing of their family--and even that of the livestock. If they consulted doctors, it was often augmenting their own diagnosis and curatives. Sometimes they threw out the doctors and carried on with their own proven medicinals and herbals. The women of the seventeenth-century St.John family left a remarkable record of their recipes and remedies, through their memoirs, letters and recipe books.
From the peaceful herb gardens of Lydiard to making broths for prisoners in the Tower of London; toasting bloaters on an open fire in the one remaining room in a derelict Lydiard House to nursing wounded cavaliers during the siege of Nottingham Castle, the St.John women were at the centre of their family's wellness. Enjoy exploring their recipes and remedies...but warning: do not try any of these at home!
