Beschreibung:

17th century Barber Surgeon.- Napkyn (Hugh, Barber Surgeon, of St. Botolph without Aldgate, City of London, fl. 1617-39) A Booke Conteyning divers excellent & approoved Remedyes in Phisique - and Chyrugery, drawne from grave and learned Authors and experienced Phisitians, collected and gathered by ye paines and industrie of Hugh Napkyn Chyrugian and Maister in Anatomie..., ?autograph manuscript, title and 133pp. excluding blanks, title within an ink decorated border (small tear in lower margin), numerous blank ff. ruled in black but not used, later ink inscription of James Rowe dated 1680 on blank f., some later interpolations probably in the hand of James Rowe, slight stain at head of title and other early ff., a few small tears in margins, slightly browned, letter from Royal College of Surgeon dated 1954 with information about Hugh Napkyn tipped in before front free endpaper, several 17th century and later recipes mostly relating to Rowe loosely inserted, new endpapers, original vellum, gilt centre ornament with date 1631 on both covers, stained and soiled, lower cover with a few small holes, rebacked in modern vellum, folio, 1631. ⁂ Unpublished. An important medical manuscript dated to the early years of the seventeenth century. Written out as if ready for publication but seemingly unpublished; there is no reference to this work in ESTC, Wellcome or the cataloguues of the Barber Surgeons or the Royal College of Surgeons. A compendium of remedies against a variety of ailments and diseases, drawing on Napkyn's own recipes and the work of numerous colleagues, including the plague, smallpox, balms for ""cold Aches & shrinking of Sinews"; unguents, "Cataplasme fold old sores..."; "A Powder for Warts... Hugh Napkin"; "For a Cancer in the Breast. Dr. Read"; "For the Fluxe"; "For a Gangrene. John Soare"; "Against the Greene sicknes"; "tooth-ache"; "Wartes"; "To make Mead"; "To make Biskit-bread"; "Against bleeding at the Nose. A charme" etc. "A Medicine against the Plague. Dr. Burgis... Of Rue & Sage... Boyle them in 3 pintes of Malmsey till a pint be wasted... . It is not only good against the common Plague, but likewise the Small poxe, Meazells, Surphets, and divers other diseases... Another. Mr Snooke... A Medicine for one infected with the Plague to drive it from ye Hart... Take a living Pigeon, and skin him on the backe... ." Hugh Napkyn, Napkin or Napkine, was a barber surgeon living in 1632 in St Botolph without Aldgate, Portsoken Ward, a heavily built up area partly within the City and partly without the walls in East London. Napkin was involved in a legal dispute in 1627 when an unnamed accuser said that Napkyn had given the wife of Jeames Staffesmore, of St Clement Danes, three pills for a pain in the head, had incised her in three places, then given her three more pills. After treatment her face and body had swollen. Napkyn said he had only given pills to her after cutting her hair, and then only on Dr Rhead's advice. Dr. Rhead confirmed in writing that the giving of pills was his advice. The suit was to be withdrawn if Napkyn paid the charges and abstained from practice in future. There was a further charge in 1629 when Napkyn was charged over treatment of the late Mrs. Wale, but this charge seems also to have been dropped. One of the recipes loose in this volume is in the form of a letter sent to Robert Rowe, 14th February 1688, in which the sender adds a postscript on the political situation of the day, "... yesterday the Prince & Princess [William III & Mary II] ware proclaimed King & Queen the Duke of Grafton & Duke of Ormond are this day turned out of all there places some say for speaking in the convention in behalfe of the late King James the second here was great acclamations of joy last night carring ye Pope in procession & burning ye Pope... Ld. V."