Medicine on the Move: Early Modern Travel and Remedies

As my new project on the history of travel, health risk and preparation begins to get underway, one of the things that I am thinking about is the place of travel within early modern medical remedy culture. What kinds of conditions could befall travellers? What did early modern people think that the processes of travel, and different kinds of transport, could do to their bodies, and what types of remedies were available to deal with them. Research is still at a very early stage, but there are already some interesting hints that remedies were available to treat a variety of travel-related conditions. 

Before the broadening of travel in the 18^th century, many journeys were relatively short, and local. As a great deal of work has shown in recent years, the early modern population was surprisingly mobile. People travelled from parish to parish, and from rural to urban areas as they visited market towns to buy and sell goods. Perhaps the majority of journeys were taken on foot, on horseback or on a cart or, for those with means, in small carriages. By the later eighteenth century, post carriages were also available to private passengers.

William Hogarth, ‘The Stage Coach’ – Image from Wikimedia Commons

But travel of any kind was a risky business. Roads were proverbially poor, often deeply rutted in summer and reduced to a quagmire in winter, making journeys by foot, or by cart or carriage, uncomfortable at best. Falls from horses were common, leading to injury or death, and even a long time in the saddle could be painful. Travel by sea, even over relatively short distances, was fraught with danger, not only from the vagaries of the weather, but also the condition and seaworthiness of the vessel. Such was the discomfort caused by sea travel that sickness on the first journey by sea was regarded as almost inevitable, only abating once the body had become accustomed to the motion of the waves.  With all this in mind, then, what options for treatment could be found in early modern remedy culture?

Travelling of any kind was clearly seen as a tiring and enervating process, and something to which the body needed time to adjust to. Some hints of this process can be found in travel-related terms in dictionaries. The term ‘travel-tainted’ was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV, and was defined by Samuel Johnson as one who was ‘harrassed or fatigued with travel’. To be ‘unwayed’ was to be unused to travel, as opposed to a ‘wayfaring man’ who, according to John Kersey’s 1658 dictionary, was one ‘accustomed to travel in the roads’. The use of the word ‘accustomed’ suggests again a process of acclimatisation. The advice of the Sick Man’s Jewel in 1674 was that ‘such that are weary by travel or labour’ should chew tobacco in the evening, whilst Leonardo Fioravanti recommended the juice of Rose Solis to those ‘who are wearied with travell’.

A Weary Traveller, 1815 – Copyright Wellcome Images

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a variety of remedies can be found to treat sore feet. Robert Turner’s, Botanologia the Brittish physician, or, the nature and vertues of English plants advocated anointing feet with the herbs ‘ladies bedstraw or gallium’ before they undertook a journey. There was even a term for this: to ‘surbate’ was to ‘batter the feet with long travel’! Turner noted that the herb mugwort ‘is excellent good to bathe the surbated Feet of Footmen and Lackies in hot weather’, admirably giving some consideration to footsore servants.

For anyone suffering from pain and discomfort caused travelling by horseback, some potential relief could be found. Andrew Boorde’s 1587, The breuiarie of health contained a remedy for galling or chafing caused by ‘riding upon an evill horse in a naughtie saddle’. His suggestion was to ‘rub, anoint or grease the place aggrieved’ with a tallow candle…perhaps not a situation you would wish to walk in on! If the unfortunate chafed traveller possessed a pair of particularly large buttocks, Boorde suggested that rubbing between the cheeks with olive oil might be a useful expedient. 

It is harder to trace specific conditions relating to coach travel, but the health dangers of being squashed into a confined space, breathing in the noisome air and odours of fellow passengers, whilst simultaneously being joggled, bumped and bounced around for hours, was a well-known hazard – particularly into the eighteenth century. The term ‘coach sick’ appears occasionally and was regarded as occurring from the ‘swimmings in the head’ that could accompany violent motion. Some physicians advocated opening the windows to constantly refresh the air; others suggested opium!

Whilst sea travel was less common outside naval and commercial purposes, medical authors did offer some suggestions for the alleviation of sea sickness. In his 1667 Treasures of Physick, John Tanner viewed sea travel as one of the key ‘external’ causes of vomiting and advocated a range of treatments including laudanum, vegetable and herbal oils and syrups.  As John Moyle noted, in his 1684 Abstract of sea chirurgery, it was not uncommon for the abject misery of constant puking to be accompanied by the discomfort of constipation: he claimed to have ‘known some who in a whole week together have not gone to stool’. Moyle’s solution for those who were ‘sea sick and vomit much’ was a gentle purge or, failing that, a ‘clyster’, or enema.

‘Seasickness’ by G.S. Treagar – Image from Wikimedia Commons

As ever in the early modern medical marketplace, where there was demand there was likely a crafty quack chasing a fast shilling. Travel-related conditions were common amongst the efficacy puffs for proprietary pills and medicines. In 1670 the ‘English Pills for the Scurvy’ claimed to be extremely useful for sea travellers, standing them ‘in great stead in all Sea-sicknesses’, as well as ‘sickly Climates or Seasons; Calentures, Fevers, Fluxes, Poysons, Agues, Surfeits, and the like Scorbutick Diseases, which so commonly afflict such as go to Sea’. John Archer’s ‘Chymical Drops’ were of ‘great use to travellers’ in curing sickness, whilst ‘he that useth [John Headrich’s Traveller’s Salt] on the Sea Vomits not’. There are many more similar examples, and plenty more still to find. 

Health and medicine were, as they still are, then, central to travel. Even the few examples given here are revealing about the supposed effects that travel was seen to have on the body, along with the approaches taken to mitigate them. I am very much looking forward to delving more deeply into the medical history of the travelling body.  

Travel and Quarantine in the 19th Century

Amongst the many impacts of COVID-19 has been the devastation of the travel industry, and its knock-on effects on the global economy. We are all having to think carefully about the ways we travel, not only internationally, but even around our own countries and communities. At the moment, a summer holiday in the sun seems like a long way off.

In Britain, one of the solutions being put in place as we tentatively begin to consider heading out again, is to impose a two-week quarantine on incoming travelers and tourists, in attempts to limit the spread or import of the virus. It all feels very odd in an age where we have become so used to travel that it has become easy, routine and even mundane. But it’s worth remembering that these issues and restrictions are not new, and that the dangers of epidemics have actually shaped travel, and affected individual travelers, for centuries. What was it like to be quarantined in the past? In 1892, a letter was sent to the Coventry Herald newspaper from a Mr W.H. Grant, a traveller to America, who found himself quarantined on a Canadian island in the midst of a deadly outbreak of Typhoid fever.

(Image of a ‘Beaver Line’ ship from WWW.NorwayHeritage.com/Gallery – creative commons licence)

Grant was headed for New York but, due to overcrowding on direct sailings, due to a cholera scare, he elected instead to go on one of the Beaver Line’s ships via Montreal, and finish his journey to NY by rail. Things immediately began to go wrong. The ship he boarded at Liverpool, the ‘SS Lake Huron’, was itself badly overcrowded and ‘taxed to its utmost capacity’, and they departed in bad weather and heavy seas. The ship had not even got as far as New Brighton, in Merseyside, when “a sort of mutiny occurred on board, culminating in a free fight between six or eight of the seamen and officers”. The ship was forced to anchor whilst a tug took the offenders away.

(Image of SS Lake Huron from WWW.NorwayHeritage.com/Gallery –  creative commons licence)

But worse was to come. It rapidly became clear that a serious infectious disease had broken out aboard the ‘Lake Huron’. This was initially “hushed up” and Grant reported that the crew were seen throwing dead bodies overboard with no ceremony when they thought “the act could not be observed by passengers”. When a steward came down with Typhoid fever, it was no longer possible to conceal the truth, and it became clear that the vessel would not be welcomed in port.

(Image ‘Man with Typhoid’ copyright Wellcome Trust, Wellcome Images)

On arrival in Quebec the SS Lake Huron was put into quarantine off an island in the St Lawrence River – “a veritable forest with rocks, valleys, mountains, bays and the most magnificent scenery imaginable”. After two days the passengers were ordered ashore “taking whatever baggage and things we should require” whilst the ship was disinfected. Hopes of a comfortable quarantine looked doubtful though. On landing, all sick passengers were transported to a hospital some distance away, whilst the rest of the passengers were led to clearing in a forest, occupied by whitewashed, one-story buildings, with no locks on the doors, nor separate areas for men and women. They were also dismayed to see nearby a “lonely graveyard in a swamp, where 5420 people were buried twenty-five years ago, within a few months having died of ship fever and cholera”.

With true Victorian efficiency, the passengers of the SS Lake Huron quickly took control of the situation and formed a management committee. Also, true to form though, this was not some egalitarian or Utopian commune, but strictly class divided, with all first- and second-class passengers having their own ‘shed’, subdivided into areas for men and women and children, and those from steerage in another “some distance off”. No need to have the poor near the posh!

Eager to restore some sense of ‘normality’ though, working parties of able men were quickly set up, who rigged up hammocks, cut down trees and even decorated the buildings with ferns and shrubs. Bonfires were made up to cook food, and dinner was served every evening at six o clock by the two cooks from the ship. In this version of ‘lockdown’ passengers soon began to make their own entertainment too. After two days Grant reported that people were busy rambling, exploring, hunting, swimming, and even organizing hill-climbing competitions. A variety of animals were captured including squirrels, snakes and titmice, providing diversion for the youngsters.

The threat of the disease remained, and three families from the steerage buildings were taken to hospital, but after a couple of weeks, Grant was hopeful of returning to the ship and onward to his destination. Here his letter ended, and it is not clear what happened next. (It’s also worth noting that this wasn’t to be the last time this particular ship was quarantined at Quebec: in 1899 an outbreak of smallpox on the ship caused a similar situation.) But whilst the detail and context of his story are unique, they still resonate. Even in unfamiliar circumstances, surrounded by the threat of contagion, and uncertain of the future, people still found a way to preserve some sense of ‘normality’.

(Image ‘Passengers on board ship undergoing quarantine examination, 1883’ copyright Wellcome Trust/Wellcome Images)

And this, without trying to sound glib, is where history IS useful – not necessarily so much in terms of particular approaches or responses, (and hopefully not in terms of the prospects for modern quarantine!) but more in reminding us that what we are experiencing now is not new. The past is strewn with epidemics. We routinely teach children about the Bubonic Plague: our very language is shot through with references to it…e.g. things we should avoid ‘like the plague’. Smallpox. Typhoid. Spanish Flu. Each obviously has its own context, its own effects and symptoms, and each leaves its mark in the collective memory. The important thing to remember, though, is that in time they pass. It might not feel like it at the moment, and the media love their ‘things will never be the same again’ headline-grabbers, but we will come out of the other side of this, hopefully stronger and better prepared for the next one.

Religion & the Sickness Experience in Early Modern Britain.

Over the years, a number of studies have been made of the sickness experiences of clergymen and religious figures as recorded in their diaries. One of the most well known is that of the diarist Ralph Josselin, vicar of Earl’s Colne in Essex. Another, lesser known, diarist I studied in the course of researching my book was Phillip Henry of Broad Oak in Flintshire, a puritan minister whose mid seventeenth-century diary covers a time of great religious upheaval, but also goes into great detail about his sicknesses. I also uncovered the records of an eighteenth-century Welsh Methodist preacher, who recorded the behaviours of his sick parishioners, naturally viewed through the lens of his own religious beliefs.

In every case, it is clear not only how central religious beliefs were in interpreting and understanding sickness, but how individual experiences could be affected by denomination.

For Puritans like Phillip Henry, for example, sickness was a test from God and it was up to the individual to interpret the message being given to them. In many ways sickness was to the body what sin was to the soul – both needed firm and definite action. As Henry wrote in 1657 “They that are whole need not a Physician…sin is the sickness of the soule, and sin-sick soules stand in great need of a Physician, and that Physician is none other than Jesus Xt”.

(c) Mansfield College, University of Oxford; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

When ill, Henry constantly monitored his symptoms and looked for causes in his behaviour. If he had a cold, he might wonder whether this was a result of the sin of pride. In other cases he felt that illness had been brought on by his over-attachment to wordly goods, or laxity in prayer. In almost every case, he viewed his body as the instrument through which God was correcting him.

If anything impressed the Godly in the sickness behaviours of others it was fortitude and stoicism. If people were penitent, so much the better. The clergy were especially pleased when the sick attended church, despite their afflictions, even if they had to be carried in, and limped out!

In the 1730s, John Harries, Methodist rector of Mynydd Bach and Abergorlech in Carmarthenshire, kept a journal in which he recorded his visits to sick parishioners (National Library of Wales MS 371B, Register of Mynydd Bach Chapel). Harries paid careful attention to the behaviour and comportment of the sick. When Morgan Evan Morgan ‘departed this life 23rd December 1736/7’, Harries noted that he had ‘behaved himself very sivil and sober’ despite being in a ‘lingering distemper about eight years’. Catherine Richard likewise ‘behaved herself inoffensive’, while Joyce Evan ‘was very cheerful…expected but to live, but hoped to be saved’.

In other cases, however, it is clear that Harries was looking to the sick for signs he could interpret of his own destiny. When Mary John died in October 1737 he noted that she ‘relied wholly on Jesus X for her soul and behaved very patient’ but also noted that she was the first received to communion at the same time as him. As he noted, ‘I shuld take this into consideration’. Those who did not conform to expectation troubled him. When Mary Richard died in July 1742, Harries was keen to stress that ‘she was very wavering and inconstant in her profession [of faith], sometimes in and sometimes out’.

M0018191 Dying man in bed.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
Left: a dying man in bed. Original Negative is a Vinegar Negative CAN NOT BE RESCANNED
Woodcut
circa 1531 By: Hans BurgkmaierOfficia M.T.C.
Cicero, Marcus T.
Published: 1531
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

He took comfort in those whom he felt offered a glimpse into his own fate. The last moments of Ann Rees showed a woman who ‘behaved herself very lovely [and] told me a few hours before she dyed that shee hoped for salvation for God’s mercy’. Reflecting on this Harries wrote that ‘the Lord prepare me for death and judgement. I see both young and old are carried away to another world unobserved’.

Constantly keeping company with the dying and dead could actually have an effect on the health of ministers. Welsh Methodists were apparently prone to depressive illness, due to their intensive introspection and concentration upon their own failings and weakness. Phillip Henry reported his unease at having attended three dying parishioners within a few days in January 1651, and worried that this was leaving him was a diminished sense of his own spirituality. Other ministers like the Manchester Presbyterian Henry Newcome, found the continual round of deathbed sittings and funerals overwhelming.

But it was not only ministers who applied their religious tenets to sickness. A lucky find in Cardiff University library’s collection was a transcription of the diary of Sarah Savage, Phillip Henry’s daughter. (J.B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Sarah Savage, London: Holdsworth and Hall, 1829). Like her father, Sarah was quick to seek the hidden meanings in her symptoms. In 1691 she was “all day at home having got an ill cold in my head”. Clearly feeling ill she fretted that “My heart was a little let out in love and praise to my Redeemer”, but reassured herself that this was “but a fit [and] soon off again”.

An attack of the smallpox the following year placed her and her family in mortal danger. Her daughter Ann, also a diarist, wrote that ‘when I had received the sentence of death within myself, surely the Lord as ready to save me”. Ann also felt that the experience had taught her a valuable lesson: “the mercies, the sweet mercies which I experienced in the affliction, I shall never forget”.

Lawrence Stone’s (now much criticised) book on early modern family life suggested that people were reluctant to invest much love in their offspring since they stood a good chance of losing them. A wealth of evidence has been put forward to refute this. Puritans, often portrayed as the most stony-faced of all Christian denominations were as troubled as anyone by illness in children. In July 1663 Henry visited a local household where a child was ‘ill of the convulsion fitts. I went to see him & O what evil there is in sin that produces such effects upon poor Innocent little ones’. With a troubled conscience he reflected ‘if this bee done to ye green tree what shall be done to the dry?’.

L0043760 Memento Mori
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
The head and shoulders of a ‘memento mori’ corpse. These statues were used to remind people of the transience of life and material luxury.
16th century Published: –
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

When family members, especially children, were ill, even the strongest of faith could be tested. After witnessing the sickness of other people’s children, he was forced to confront the death of his own young son from measles. It is one of the starkest and most moving diary entries I have ever encountered, and conveys the conflict between religious conviction and a parent’s desperation. Perhaps most strikingly, Henry looks to God to show him where he (Phillip) had strayed to be punished thus.

“At Sun-Sett this day hee dy’d, our first born and the beginning of our strength, a forward child, manly, loving, patient under correction. O that I could now be so under the correcting hand of my heavenly Father. Lord, wherefore is it that thou contendest, show mee, show mee? Have I over boasted, over loved, over prized? My heart bleeds. Lord have Mercy”.

Religion was a central part of the sickness experience, and coloured not only hopes and expectations of recovery, but also the actual, physical experience of illness. Ministers and lay individuals alike, albeit perhaps to different extents, looked to God to explain how they were feeling and what this might suggest about their own conduct.