Thomas Charnock's Book Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth

"Lady Alcumy": Elizabethan Gentlewomen and the Practice of Chymistry

“…Grace's recipes frequently refer to her "limbeck" (alembic), crucible, "matrass which hath a long neck" and pelican, a circulatory still resembling the symbolic bird discussed in the previous chapter (Figure 2). 39 Furthermore, her claim that "I have wont to do it in a vessel of glass, well luted", or sealed, shows that practical knowledge informed these recipes; she also recognized earthen vessels as a more cost-effective alternative. 40 We find several references to a "balneum marie", the double boiler invented by the legendary Maria the Jewess.…”

“…38 Her practice, which catered to both members of her household and the wider community, enjoyed popularity from its inception; on 30 January 1600, she "dressed apoore boies legge that Came to me…after, I dressed the hand of one of our seruants that was verie sore Cutt…after that I dressed one of the mens handes that was hurt". 39 The nature and level of this activity were unprecedented. They also remind readers of the diary that the events she recounted did not represent the totality of her experience.…”

“…194-216. status by controlling and condemning their competitors. 39 They promoted a tripartite hierarchy of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries that excluded and thus marginalized wise women, midwives and other unlicensed medical practitioners. Deborah Harkness has convincingly argued that organized systems of urban health care included early modern women working under the aegis of parishes and hospitals; she identified 305 unlicensed female practitioners in London between 1560 and 1610, fewer than ten percent of whom the College prosecuted.…”

“…By closing convents and selling land to fund England's university system, Henry VIII restricted female access to knowledge, necessarily shifting their education to the household sphere where natural philosophy also found a home. 43 Women may not have been allowed to 39 See Pelling and Webster, "Medical Practitioners," pp. 165-235;Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and John T. Young, Faith, Alchemy and Natural Philosophy: Johann Moriaen, Reformed Intelligencer, and the Hartlib Circle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Schiebinger,The Mind Has No Sex?,Merchant,The Death of Nature,153;and Lucinda Beier,Sufferers & Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987): 16.…”

“…claimed to have obtained the philosopher's stone from a fellow Black Friar in 1515. 39 His nephew's 1565 "Booke Dedicated vnto the Queenes maiestie" promised Elizabeth the health and riches typically associated with the stone in exchange for a fourteen-year subsidy. 40 Like Charnock's other extant writings, this petition offers a vivid glimpse of its unlearned author's life, beliefs and chymical experiences.…”