Woman's Recipe Predated Accepted Cure for Scurvy

Scurvy is relatively rare today, but in the bad old days it killed thousands every year, and no one understood what was happening or why. Story from the Mail Online, dailymail.co.uk Amazing notebook shows how woman found a cure for scurvy half a century before the doctors By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 1:20 PM on 05th March 2009 She could have gone down in history as the woman who developed a cure for scurvy, the scourge of sailors the world over. Ebbot Michell seems to have concocted a remedy decades before physician James Lind published his revolutionary Treatise Of The Scurvy in 1753 - but her name is forgotten and appears in no medical text book. Her recipe, in a newly discovered handwritten book dated 1707, recommends mixing the extracts of various plants with a plentiful supply of orange juice, white wine and beer. If the Navy and merchant companies had followed Ebbot Michell's advice, the vitamin C in the concoction would have saved thousands of sailors' lives - even though the efficacy of adding alcohol may be questionable. Lind's later work on the cure and prevention of scurvy was prompted by the extraordinary round-the-world voyage of Commander George Anson in the early 1740s, in which only 145 men out of 1,300 arrived back home, the majority of them dying of scurvy. Even so, it was not until 1795 that the Admiralty followed his recommendations. Ebbot Michell's 'Recp.t for the Scurvy' involved pounding '3 handfulls of watter Cresses, the like quantity of scurvy Grass [rich in vitamin C], & Like quantity of brooklime [a water plant], one handfull of bettony [a woodland plant used as a nerve tonic] (and) half a handfull of wormwood' [an aromatic leaf long used in natural cures]. The mix should be added to a quart of white wine, covered and allowed to stand for 12 hours before the liquid is strained into a bottle. Then the 'juce of Eight oranges' should be added and the patient should 'every morning take eight spoonfulls with a draught of ale'. Michell adds: 'This is a present remedy,' meaning a new cure for scurvy. The well-thumbed, 100-page household book, entitled simply 'Ebbot Michell Her Book 1707' and containing largely medicinal and herbal recipes, was found in a house in Hasfield, Glos, and is expected to fetch about £600 at Bonhams in London on March 24. Manuscripts specialist Simon Roberts said: 'It's a fascinating read. With the exception of the alcohol, the writer appears to be spot on with her recipe for scurvy.' Ebbot Michell, believed to have been a Cornishwoman, also included a prototype absinthe, the highly alcoholic drink nicknamed the 'green fairy' in the decadent late 19th century - also containing wormwood. She writes: 'Steep a branch or 2 of Comon woormwood in half a pint of good white wine, Close Covered, on some pot all night and in the morning strain it through a Clear Linen Cloth & put in a little sugar and warm it and so drink it. It is marvellous good for it gives a good stomack and free from the worms.' She also recommends the herb sage for headaches and prescribes 'Flower de Luce for the dropsie' as well as providing recipes for 'The King's Evil' (scrofula) and 'For a horse that is swoln'. ******************************************************************************** I find it amazing that the story does not mention how rare it was for a woman to be able to write down her own recipes in 1704! Even among the nobility and gentry education of girls in reading and writing was by no means an accepted course, in an age when many men of the upper classes were illiterate! Who was Ebbot Mitchell? What was her story? We shall probably never know.