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The Curious Cures Of Old England: Eccentric treatments, outlandish remedies and fearsome surgeries for ailments from the plague to the pox
Did you know that a child can be cured of the whooping cough by passing it under the belly of a donkey?
The history of medicine in Britain is filled with the most bizarre and gruesome cures for many common ailments. Although enthusiastically supported by doctors of the time, many of these cures were often useless and often resulted in the death of the patient.
But strange and alarming though many of the cures may seem, some of them did in fact work and provide the basis of much of the medicine we take for granted nowadays. The use of herbs by medieval monks was remarkably effective - and still is today.
This highly entertaining and informative book will fascinate anyone who has ever wondered whether doctors really know what they are talking about - just don't try any of the cures mentioned at home!
Or that weak eyes can be cured by the application of chicken dung - or alternatively be large draughts of beer taken in the morning?
Or that the juice extracted from a bucketful of snails covered in brown sugar and hung over a basin overnight was once used to cure a sore throat?
The history of medicine in Britain is filled with the most bizarre and gruesome cures for many common ailments. Although enthusiastically supported by doctors of the time, many of these cures were often useless and often resulted in the death of the patient.
But strange and alarming though many of the cures may seem, some of them did in fact work and provide the basis of much of the medicine we take for granted nowadays. The use of herbs by medieval monks was remarkably effective - and still is today.
This highly entertaining and informative book will fascinate anyone who has ever wondered whether doctors really know what they are talking about - just don't try any of the cures mentioned at home!
Or that weak eyes can be cured by the application of chicken dung - or alternatively be large draughts of beer taken in the morning?
Or that the juice extracted from a bucketful of snails covered in brown sugar and hung over a basin overnight was once used to cure a sore throat?
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Nigel Cawthorne
317 books127 followersNigel Cawthorne is an Anglo-American writer of fiction and non-fiction, and an editor. He has written more than 80 books on a wide range of subjects and has contributed to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph Daily Mail and The New York Times. He has appeared on television and BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Many of Nigel Cawthorne's books are compilations of popular history, without footnotes, references or bibliographies. His own web site refers to a description of his home as a "book-writing factory" and says, "More than half my books were commissioned by publishers and packagers for a flat fee or for a for a reduced royalty".
One of his most notable works was Taking Back My Name, an autobiography of Ike Turner, with whom he spent a number of weeks working with him on, taking up residence in Turner's house. The book caused much controversy, resulting in court cases for three years following its release.
Cawthorne currently lives in Bloomsbury, London with his girlfriend and son, Colin (born 1982).
Many of Nigel Cawthorne's books are compilations of popular history, without footnotes, references or bibliographies. His own web site refers to a description of his home as a "book-writing factory" and says, "More than half my books were commissioned by publishers and packagers for a flat fee or for a for a reduced royalty".
One of his most notable works was Taking Back My Name, an autobiography of Ike Turner, with whom he spent a number of weeks working with him on, taking up residence in Turner's house. The book caused much controversy, resulting in court cases for three years following its release.
Cawthorne currently lives in Bloomsbury, London with his girlfriend and son, Colin (born 1982).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 19, 2021
interesting book in a series about curious things, some strange cures listed though
February 7, 2018
This is one of those fun reads you can pick up read a few pages and put down again knowing that you will have not lost anything if you read it again in an hour or a week and you have not really lost anything.
The description really pretty much tells its all- what you have here is a book of various historic remedies listed by dubious creator and by subject (be it a condition or a part of the body).
there is not really much of a structure to the book which I think adds to the ability to be read at your leisure and not feel as though you lost anything the flip to it though is that you do not really learn much.
Yes historically some of these wonder cures were fabulously toxic and dangerous and why we didnt kill off the human race is a miracle but at the same time there were the fledglings of modern medicine showing where other doctors stood up and challenged these quack remedies.
I think really for me and yes I appreciate that if they did there would always be the risk some bright spark would try and copy them - but I would have liked to have learnt more about the reasoning for why they were so dangerous and possibly a little more science in to their creation and use. then again thats the chemist in me.
The book is entertaining and a little scary in places (as to how someone really thought that was a good idea to ingest that) but at the end of the day I didnt really feel like I learnt much apart from how far medicine has come.
The description really pretty much tells its all- what you have here is a book of various historic remedies listed by dubious creator and by subject (be it a condition or a part of the body).
there is not really much of a structure to the book which I think adds to the ability to be read at your leisure and not feel as though you lost anything the flip to it though is that you do not really learn much.
Yes historically some of these wonder cures were fabulously toxic and dangerous and why we didnt kill off the human race is a miracle but at the same time there were the fledglings of modern medicine showing where other doctors stood up and challenged these quack remedies.
I think really for me and yes I appreciate that if they did there would always be the risk some bright spark would try and copy them - but I would have liked to have learnt more about the reasoning for why they were so dangerous and possibly a little more science in to their creation and use. then again thats the chemist in me.
The book is entertaining and a little scary in places (as to how someone really thought that was a good idea to ingest that) but at the end of the day I didnt really feel like I learnt much apart from how far medicine has come.
March 6, 2014
1 of: The Curious Cures of Old England [Hardcover:]
By: Nigel Cawthorne
Condition: Used - Very Good
Sold by: World of Books Ltd £0.01
Powder room reading that has turned into compulsive reading. I can throw away all those other household medical books - this is the one to cure all ills.
"How do you reckon that then?" I hear you ask.
Because if I get this book out when they start grumbling about a sore throat for example, they will find the ill is far easier to bear than the cure. I need to get me some supplies in though - many cures call for cats to be boiled live with olive oil, and there is the question of fresh kiddies' urine being a panacea.
This is a hoot of a book and this is one of the finest lines:
"Young brides also found them [leeches:] a useful cure for a prematurely misplaced maidenhead."
Baron Heurteloup's Artificial Leech
By: Nigel Cawthorne
Condition: Used - Very Good
Sold by: World of Books Ltd £0.01
Powder room reading that has turned into compulsive reading. I can throw away all those other household medical books - this is the one to cure all ills.
"How do you reckon that then?" I hear you ask.
Because if I get this book out when they start grumbling about a sore throat for example, they will find the ill is far easier to bear than the cure. I need to get me some supplies in though - many cures call for cats to be boiled live with olive oil, and there is the question of fresh kiddies' urine being a panacea.
This is a hoot of a book and this is one of the finest lines:
"Young brides also found them [leeches:] a useful cure for a prematurely misplaced maidenhead."
Baron Heurteloup's Artificial Leech
June 15, 2012
I wasn't overly impressed by the writing style, but the interesting facts within are entertainment enough. Some stand-out remedies for your delectation follow:
During the Tudor era, a remedy for sore eyes involved binding the lungs of a hare over them, or licking the eyes of a frog!
In the 17th century powdered mummy was considered a cure-all, for anything from asthma to poisoning, and during the Plague years roasted toads were pressed against the lymph glands so that the disease might be 'drawn out', and presumably into the toad.
The Victorians used opium and cocaine for just about everything, so it's a wonder this era is so associated with uptight repression when they were high as a kite for much of the time.
My favourite (if you can call it that) cure for syphilis was the brilliantly named 'Culpeper's cock cure'. A young cock (of the chicken variety) was boiled with spices and herbs, along with three ounces of young red worms collected from a horse's dung hill and cleansed in white wine. Thankfully (sort of), the resultant concoction was not ingested, but applied as a poultice, mixed with crushed snails. Lovely. Men were also advised to soothe their bits in the warm innards of freshly killed fowl. (I have a theory STD rates would plummet if young men were told this was the only available cure today!)
Isn't modern medicine marvellous?!
During the Tudor era, a remedy for sore eyes involved binding the lungs of a hare over them, or licking the eyes of a frog!
In the 17th century powdered mummy was considered a cure-all, for anything from asthma to poisoning, and during the Plague years roasted toads were pressed against the lymph glands so that the disease might be 'drawn out', and presumably into the toad.
The Victorians used opium and cocaine for just about everything, so it's a wonder this era is so associated with uptight repression when they were high as a kite for much of the time.
My favourite (if you can call it that) cure for syphilis was the brilliantly named 'Culpeper's cock cure'. A young cock (of the chicken variety) was boiled with spices and herbs, along with three ounces of young red worms collected from a horse's dung hill and cleansed in white wine. Thankfully (sort of), the resultant concoction was not ingested, but applied as a poultice, mixed with crushed snails. Lovely. Men were also advised to soothe their bits in the warm innards of freshly killed fowl. (I have a theory STD rates would plummet if young men were told this was the only available cure today!)
Isn't modern medicine marvellous?!
February 17, 2021
Nice wee book. Some great anecdotes, some not soo good. Some of the chapters had me in stitches and I could not put it down. Some (especially towards the end) were a bit boring and repetitive. It just shows how many times the same quackery could be performed without people catching on! Really fun to pick up and read a story or two from time to time, especially if you're into history or medicine.
December 14, 2021
Good read, highly entertaining
December 31, 2019
In brief: A collection of strange medicine, strange doctors, and strange ailments from the Middle Ages to the 1800s.
Thoughts: This pretty much delivered what I expected—a light, entertaining, fast read, a lot of historical medical trivia, a few jokes, a fun read if you like the darker, weirder, grosser parts of the past. There are lots of bite-sized chunks of info loosely grouped around topic like “internal medicine” and “quack doctors”, with scattered illustrations drawn from medical texts (mostly of medical instruments and doctors at work). He brings up stuff like alchemy and sympathetic healing, shows somewhat the progression of things like medical licensing, even brings up some noteworthy figures (if you’re into this stuff) like Robert Liston and Mary Toft.
However, if you’re looking for a book aimed at serious history people or academics, this isn’t it. Cawthorne might have done a lot of research to come up with all the medieval and early modern texts, and all the folk healing and medical pamphlets, and everything else that he’s drawing from—but in most cases, he doesn’t cite his sources. Did he get that fact from a newspaper? An old book? Someone else’s modern academic collection of medical history? Where would I read that ad, if I wanted to look for it?
In a similar vein, he often bounces around in history, putting a medieval cure after one from the 1600s and following it with something that’s probably from the 1700s but he doesn’t say. And I would have appreciated having more explanations of whether a given cure might have worked, what active ingredients there were, that sort of thing. More context, basically, not just lists of ingredients or advertisement. I like knowing why.
But like I said, I didn’t really go in expecting that, it would’ve just been icing on the cake. There’s a lot of information, told understandably, and Cawthorne’s method of mainly quoting text and relating incidents helps to convey patterns in a way that simply explaining them wouldn’t—common ingredients, common types of treatments, even the way people wrote addresses before maps and mass literacy. He’s made the history engaging too, or at least brought it to life somewhat as a “weird medicine highlights reel”—and it’s certainly made me relieved to be living now, when I don’t have to worry about dying from arsenic pills.
It was enjoyable, I learned a bit, I didn’t get all the jokes on account of not being British, and I think there might even be some facts that I can put into use in fiction at some point. Would recommend, even though it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been.
To bear in mind: May contain medical treatments and ailments not suitable for all viewers (but not that many).
6.8/10
Thoughts: This pretty much delivered what I expected—a light, entertaining, fast read, a lot of historical medical trivia, a few jokes, a fun read if you like the darker, weirder, grosser parts of the past. There are lots of bite-sized chunks of info loosely grouped around topic like “internal medicine” and “quack doctors”, with scattered illustrations drawn from medical texts (mostly of medical instruments and doctors at work). He brings up stuff like alchemy and sympathetic healing, shows somewhat the progression of things like medical licensing, even brings up some noteworthy figures (if you’re into this stuff) like Robert Liston and Mary Toft.
However, if you’re looking for a book aimed at serious history people or academics, this isn’t it. Cawthorne might have done a lot of research to come up with all the medieval and early modern texts, and all the folk healing and medical pamphlets, and everything else that he’s drawing from—but in most cases, he doesn’t cite his sources. Did he get that fact from a newspaper? An old book? Someone else’s modern academic collection of medical history? Where would I read that ad, if I wanted to look for it?
In a similar vein, he often bounces around in history, putting a medieval cure after one from the 1600s and following it with something that’s probably from the 1700s but he doesn’t say. And I would have appreciated having more explanations of whether a given cure might have worked, what active ingredients there were, that sort of thing. More context, basically, not just lists of ingredients or advertisement. I like knowing why.
But like I said, I didn’t really go in expecting that, it would’ve just been icing on the cake. There’s a lot of information, told understandably, and Cawthorne’s method of mainly quoting text and relating incidents helps to convey patterns in a way that simply explaining them wouldn’t—common ingredients, common types of treatments, even the way people wrote addresses before maps and mass literacy. He’s made the history engaging too, or at least brought it to life somewhat as a “weird medicine highlights reel”—and it’s certainly made me relieved to be living now, when I don’t have to worry about dying from arsenic pills.
It was enjoyable, I learned a bit, I didn’t get all the jokes on account of not being British, and I think there might even be some facts that I can put into use in fiction at some point. Would recommend, even though it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been.
To bear in mind: May contain medical treatments and ailments not suitable for all viewers (but not that many).
6.8/10
June 8, 2008
I think I am suffering from the Hockogrockle and the Marthambles. This book is a very interesting albeit sometimes very disgusting look at the history of medicine. Thank you Jesus for modern technology and aseptic technique.
December 21, 2008
I thought this was a fun piece and read it in two sittings.
Whilst I read it through, it is the sort of book that you could also dip into chapter by chaoter or even just opening it randomly on a page.
A good laugh - but a bit scary to think that people actually tried such things!
Whilst I read it through, it is the sort of book that you could also dip into chapter by chaoter or even just opening it randomly on a page.
A good laugh - but a bit scary to think that people actually tried such things!
February 18, 2021
Some interesting entries, but best taken in small doses.
Read
November 9, 2022DNF
Read more like a children’s history book of anecdotes. Not what I was looking for at all.
Read more like a children’s history book of anecdotes. Not what I was looking for at all.
August 28, 2023
Eye read about 2010
8/10 interesting book about the odd remedies doctors from the olden days used to prescribe.
8/10 interesting book about the odd remedies doctors from the olden days used to prescribe.
August 5, 2025
This book is interesting and easy to read
November 24, 2012
Interesting book about some of things humans have done to each other, often in good faith, to help heal others.
Only four stars due to the bad spelling (in a traditionally published book no less) and the factual error that confuses George VI with George IV.
Only four stars due to the bad spelling (in a traditionally published book no less) and the factual error that confuses George VI with George IV.
February 21, 2013
Short paragraphs about the various cures and treatments for various ailments in pre-20th century England. Not really enough to pique my interest in any particular thing but not terribly written.
Read
June 27, 2013Interesting and funnt. Quite interesting. Worth a look, nt to all tastes.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews