I am delighted to be hosting the first stop on Seamus O’Caellaigh’s book tour for his latest book, Pustules, Pestilence and Pain: Tudor Treatments and Ailments of Henry VIII. To mark the occasion, Seamus has written a fascinating guest post for us. Happy reading about Henry VIII’s ulcers!
Synopsis
Henry VIII lived for 55 years and had many health issues, particularly towards the end of his reign.
In Pustules, Pestilence, and Pain, historian Seamus O’Caellaigh has delved deep into the documents of Henry’s reign to select some authentic treatments that Henry’s physicians compounded and prescribed to one suffering from those ailments.
Packed with glorious full-colour photos of the illnesses and treatments Henry VIII used, alongside primary source documents, this book is a treat for the eyes and is full of information for those with a love of all things Tudor. Each illness and accident has been given its own section in chronological order, including first-hand accounts, descriptions of the treatments and photographic recreations of the treatment and ingredients.
I Have This Sore on My Leg…
“The King goes seldom abroad because his leg is something sore; therefore, you had better speak to Brian on his return, who has for influence no fellow in the Privy Chamber,” wrote John Husee on April 30, 1537 (Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII). Ten years before Henry was troubled by an ulcer on his left leg, and then by 1537, he was troubled by ulcers on both legs. The ulcers had become infected and were seeping. The pain started to affect Henry’s ability to travel and do the activities he enjoyed. The portrait of Henry, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1537, shows a very different Henry than his previous portraits. Looking at 7 different ulcer treatments from Nicholas Culpeper’s English Physician gives a pretty good idea of the medical treatments of the period. And a hundred years after Henry VIII, Nicholas pulled many of his treatments from the same medical texts as Tudor medical staff, like ‘De Materia Medica’ by Pedanius Dioscorides.
Treatment #1: “[Alkanet] helps old ulcers, hot inflammations, burnings by common fire and St. Anthony’s fire, by antipathy to Mars; for these uses, your best way is to make it into an ointment.” Culpeper says later in his herbal that the proper way to make an ointment is to bruise (to smash the life out of), the herb and then mix with hog’s grease. Alkanet root is primarily used as a natural dyeing agent and makes shades of red and dusky purples. You are telling me that the ulcer will be better if it is pinker? Can I just use a bottle of food dye?
Alehoof
Treatment #2: “The juice of [Ale-hoof] boiled with a little honey and verdigris, doth wonderfully cleanse fistulas, ulcers, and stayeth the spreading or eating of cancers and ulcers.” Oh, both fistulas and ulcers! According to Nursing Herbal Medicine Handbook, Ale-hoof is used for treating poorly healing wounds and has anti-inflammatory properties. That’s wonderful, then we will add honey and verdigris, “a green or greenish-blue poisonous pigment resulting from the action of acetic acid on copper…” It is well researched that honey has been used for millennia for its healing properties, and then we ruin it all by adding poisons. It is also worth noting that along with the lead used by Henry’s Physicians, there were treatments in their medical texts that contained verdigris.
Treatment #3: “…the leaves, or the juice of [Sea-Colewort], applied to sores or ulcers, cleanse and heal them, dissolve swellings, and take away inflammations.” Sea-Colewort is in the same family as cabbage and grows along the shore by the ocean. To juice a plant an apothecary would smash the plant until the liquid contained in the plant can be strained off. I am not sure I would be rubbing salty coleslaw on my ulcer, but it might be a good addition to a potluck!
Comfrey
Treatment #4: “The roots of comfrey taken fresh, beaten small, and spread upon leather, and laid upon any place troubled with the gout, do presently give ease of the pains; and applied in the same manner, give ease to pained joints, and profit very much for running and moist ulcers, gangrenes, mortifications, and the like, for which it hath by often experience been found helpful.” According to the Nursing Herbal Medicine Handbook, it is likely that the healing ability, that will treat bruising, inflammation, and swelling is due to the allantoin in the roots and leaves. I am unsure why leather would be preferred over the usual fabric for poultice application, but it’s not like the author has asked us before to apply poisons to our open sores… oh, wait…
Dill
Treatment #5: “The seed [of dill], being roasted or fried, and used in oils or plaisters, dissolve the imposthumes in the fundament; and drieth up all moist ulcers, especially in the fundament.” Dill is well known to any pickle lover unless you like the sweet ones. I enjoy a little dill in my dip for veggies, but not sure I would want to spread it on my legs, instead of a carrot. According to Culpeper, a plaister is made with any of the following ingredients: metals, stones, divers sorts of earth, faeces, juices, liquors, seeds, roots, herbs, excrements of creatures, wax, resin, gums. Now we are ruining my dip with faeces or dirt, I will not want it on my carrots either.
Golden Rod
Treatment #6: “[Golden Rod] is a sovereign wound herb, inferior to none, both for the inward and outward hurts; green wounds, old sores and ulcers, are quickly cured therewith.” Golden rod is a plant within a genus of about 100 to 120 species of flowering plants all in the aster family. However most of those species are native to North America, and so it is likely that Culpeper was specifically referring to Solidago Virgaurea , which just so happens to be also called woundwort.
Treatment #7: “The juice [of masterwort] hereof dropped, or tents dipped therein and applied either to green wounds or filthy rotten ulcers, and those that come by envenomed weapons, doth soon cleanse and heal them.” There was much talk in the court of Henry about the smell that came from his fistula, I think I would be considered but filthy and rotten. Masterwort is also called ground elder due to its similar appearance in flower and leaf shape to the Elder Bush. It might have been introduced into Britain by the Romans and can often be found in the monastery gardens.
Within my book Pustules Pestilence and Pain, I include a couple of treatments for ulcers from the medical text of Henry’s staff and am thankful I am not being treated for ulcers in the 16th or 17th century. It is no wonder that Henry’s legs never healed. Often it seems that the treatments used would cause more harm than good, especially when putting these ingredients topically on an open wound, and these 7 treatments are not any better. We often hear many reasons for the mood changes in Henry VIII throughout his reign, and a series of reasons why that happened. I propose that some of the treatments that could have been used could have affected his health in a negative way. Thank goodness for modern medicine.
Author Bio
Seamus O’Caellaigh has always been interested in the Tudor dynasty and the many uses of plants. He grew up learning about plants from his grandmother Anne Kelley and mother Diane Prickett. Their love of plants has manifested in Seamus through his love of being out in the wild looking for medicinal plants, through his spending lots of time in the family garden and through spending time in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. He is most often seen with his head down, looking at the plants along the path and not at what lies ahead.
Having joined a pre-1600s recreation group, Seamus found a way to incorporate his love of the Tudors with a study of medicinal plants from that time period, along with the many herbal books written from the 1st century to the turn of the 17th century. Nothing makes Seamus happier than finding an obscure reference, or his son Jerrick bringing him a plant for “Dad’s Plant Projects.”
Buy Pustules, Pestilence and Pain: Tudor Treatments and Ailments of Henry VIII at Amazon UK
Ooh yikes! Modern medicine really is a wonderful thing!
oh dear sounds horrendous and very painful.