And Still More Anecdotes

The following has been extracted from Conchologists' Newsletter No. 34, p.160

"SNAIL WATER FOR JAUNDICE 1700"

"Take a peck of snail shells, lay them on a hot hearthstone before the fire until they have done hissing and spitting, then wipe them from the froth and break in a mortar. Have a quart of earth worms, slit and scoured clean with salt and water and heat them with the snails. Then take angelica, celandine, wood-sorrel, agrimony, bearfoot, barberry bark, great dock roots of each two handfuls, rosemary flowers a quart, 1 lb. of hartshorn, turmeric and fenugreek 2 oz. of each, 1/2 oz. of powdered saffron and 3 oz. of cloves fresh beaten. Shred and infuse all in 3 galls. of ale, then distil and draw off. Three spoonfuls in a glass of sack before every meal and use moderate exercise".

Reprinted in Water in England, by Dorothy Hartley (1964).

Nora F. McMillan