Plants and Wart Cures in England from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century: Some Examples

Abstract

THE inadequacies of the orthodox medical services in the pre-modern period left a large proportion of the population dependent upon traditional folk medicine. This was essentially a mixture of commonsense remedies based on the accumulated experiences of nursing the sick, combined with inherited lore about the healing properties of certain substances, particularly plants. The salient point about these remedies was their eclecticism, drawing as they did upon whatever traditions or medicaments appeared both relevant and accessible at the time. This was inevitable in an era when thie onus of responsibility for healing rested largely with the patient, who was free to draw on his or her favourite remedies, which relied in the main on the use of indigenous herbs. Traditional folk medicine, however, also included certain types of ritual healing, in which prayers, charms or particular actions accompanied the practical remedy or even formed the sole means of treatment. Magical healing of this kind might sometimes be attempted by the patient himself, or on other occasions by a relation or the local wiseman or woman. The medieval church itself had recommended the use of prayers when healing the sick or gathering medicinal herbs, and this led to a weakening in the fundamental distinction between a prayer and a charm, encouraging the idea that there was virtue in the mere repetition of holy words. Medieval theologians also encouraged the use of prayers as an accompaniment to herb gathering, so the idea survived that these plants would be useless unless they were picked in a ritual manner. Moreover, there was often no clear distinction between the use of natural and supernatural remedies. Many, which would seem magical to modern eyes, were in fact based on contemporary assumptions about the physical properties of natural substances and were employed as a purely physical form of treatment at all levels of society. Nowhere is this conjunction of the practical and the magical remedy better illustrated than in the recorded cures for that unsightly viral skin infection known as warts. With regard to practical applications, the sap or juice of certain plants applied to warts was believed to clear them, particularly those that had a milky or acrid type of sap. In Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire and Somerset, for example, warts were rubbed with the soft white inner skins of broad bean or runner bean pods; another method was to rub the warts with the juice from the leaves. Sources indicate these remedies existed until the end of the nineteenth century.' In Devon, the buttercup was known as 'wart flower' on this account, as were other plants such as the sun spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia) which was known as 'wartwort' as early as the mid-sixteenth century,2 and the petty spurge (Euphorbia peplus) called in Lincolnshire 'wart-grass' and 'wart-weed'.3 Dandelion sap was used in Derbyshire, Somerset and other counties4 to remove warts, as was the sap from the greater celandine (Chelidonium majus), red campion (Silene dioica), yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) and the scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis).