From plant to remedy
Once a medieval healer had a plant, the next step was turning it into something a patient could take or apply. The methods were mostly kitchen techniques: boiling, steeping, pounding, mixing with fat or honey and straining through cloth. The skills overlapped with cooking and brewing, which is one reason household women were often experienced at them. The choice of plant, covered in the article on medicinal plants and gardens, mattered less here than the form of the preparation.
None of the recipes in this article should be tried today. Medieval measures were imprecise, some ingredients are poisonous, and modern medical advice should be followed instead.
Common forms of remedy
Drinks and infusions. Herbs steeped or boiled in water, wine or ale were among the simplest remedies. Wine and ale were common bases because they were part of ordinary diet and helped extract flavors and active substances. A drink might be taken warm in the morning or at night, and recipes frequently specify a number of days. Syrups and sweetened drinks used honey, and later sugar, which was an imported and costly ingredient.
Salves and ointments. For skin, wounds and sore joints, healers pounded plants and mixed them with animal fat, butter, wax or oil to make salves. Beeswax stiffened the mixture, honey was often added for its sticky and preserving qualities, and the whole thing was kept in a pot. Some salves were heated slowly so that the plant’s properties passed into the fat.
Poultices and plasters. Fresh or cooked herbs, crushed and bound in cloth, were applied directly to a swelling or wound. Plasters contained a sticky base, spread on cloth or leather, and were left in place for a time. Bread, oats, flour and egg were common additions.
Electuaries. Powdered drugs mixed with honey or syrup into a paste were called electuaries. Those with many ingredients and costly imports, such as spices, were made by apothecaries and could be quite expensive.
Powders, pills and lozenges. Dried plants were ground into powders to be mixed into food or drink, and shaped into pills or lozenges for easier storage.
Baths, steams and fumigations. Herbs added to bath water, or burned or heated so patients could breathe the smoke or vapor, were used for chest complaints, aches and as a way to purify a room.
Oils and distilled waters. Plants infused in oil provided preparations for rubbing into skin. Distillation of herb waters became more common in the later Middle Ages, and the same techniques were used by alchemists and perfumers, as discussed in the material on medieval alchemists.
Recipe books and herbals
Remedies were recorded in several kinds of books. Herbals described individual plants and their uses, often borrowing from earlier authorities. A late-antique herbal attributed to a writer called Apuleius circulated for centuries, and an Old English translation survives. Leechbooks, collections of remedies arranged by ailment, include an Old English collection known as Bald’s Leechbook, from around the tenth century. In the later Middle Ages, handbooks of remedies in vernacular languages multiplied, aimed at people who did not read Latin.
Such books often combine practical instructions with charms, prayers, astrological tips and moralizing. The sources borrow so heavily from one another that it can be hard to tell what was actually used. Scribes copied and adapted the material, which is part of the story of scriptoria and scribes, and surviving manuscripts often show signs of use, such as notes in the margins.
Apothecaries relied on standardized collections of compound recipes, one of the most widely copied of which was a twelfth-century Salerno work known as the Antidotarium Nicolai. Cooks and apothecaries thus shared both ingredients and recipe formats.
Dosage and judgment
Recipes often give quantities in rough terms, such as a handful, a spoonful or the weight of a coin, and tell the user to continue “until healed.” Learned physicians worked with degrees of strength and gave more careful instructions, matching dose to the patient’s age, sex, strength and the season. Healers often advised starting gently, and good writers warned that strong drugs, including purges, could kill the weak.
Beliefs about effectiveness
Medieval healers judged remedies by experience, by authority and by theory. If a patient recovered, the remedy got the credit. Because many illnesses resolve by themselves, the system could appear to work even when it did little. Some preparations probably did have real effects: poppy products affected pain and sleep, willow-related plants might ease aches, honey and some resins may have helped keep wounds clean, and mint or fennel could ease digestion. Others had no effect, and some, such as heavy metals or toxic plants, were harmful.
Special ingredients
A few recipes call for unusual or alarming ingredients: animal parts, dung, blood, or precious stones. These are a minority of the material, though they attract attention, and many reflect ideas about sympathetic powers. Costly imports like spices were also considered potent partly because they were rare and traveled far, a point connected to the spice trade.
Remedies during epidemics
When plague arrived, healers turned to what they knew: aromatic herbs and vinegar to fight bad air, fumigation of rooms, and diet. Plague remedies in medical tracts were mostly extensions of familiar preparations, and none was effective against the disease itself.
Sharing knowledge
Remedies passed among households, convents, monasteries and markets. Neighbors exchanged recipes, and a lady of the manor might keep a collection and distribute remedies to tenants as part of her duties. This sharing means that much medieval care was informal and left few records, even though it covered most everyday ailments.