‘Probatum est’. The Medical Recipes in London, Wellcome Library, MS 3009

Abstract

Recipe books are frequently encountered in Early Modern English scientific writing. They are of paramount importance to understand medical practice in the period and they usually gather collections of culinary and/or medical recipes. The present paper investigates the medical recipes contained in MS Wellcome 3009 (ff. 17r–90r), a 17th-century recipe book housed at the Wellcome Library in London. The medical recipes are analyzed in terms of their structural and linguistic features and, in this sense, five different stages are distinguished within the recipes: a) title; b) ingredients; c) preparation; d) application; and e) efficacy phrase.