The medicinal recipes of Hannah Woolley: everyday practice and female authority in seventeenth-century England

Abstract

This article describes a seventeenth-century English woman writer’s interests in medical care and the reasons that led her to publish texts on this topic. Hannah Woolley offered guidance on a wide variety of topics in the domestic sphere, including recipes for health and beauty. Here we investigate the principles that governed the preparation of these recipes, Woolley’s intentions in writing on this topic, and the way in which academic medicine was translated and practiced by women routinely during this period. Defining these issues will help shed light on the scenario in which literate female healers worked and the nature of their relationships with learned physicians.