Plague? Put Some Eggs On It
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- čas přidán 24. 04. 2024
- What did 17th century people do when they had a headache? Where did they learn how to cook? In this episode we're reading questionable recipes - whether it's recipes for food, beauty or homemade medicine.
The main component of aspirin comes from the bark of willow trees so it's not impossible that chewing on a tree root may actually well help with headache
It is impossible that natural remedies do not exist, even if people didn't understand why something worked they would know what did work. Too bad so many remidies got tossed out the window in favor of artificial without actual research.
yes- tea made from willow bark could be a thing aswell
I think you might enjoy looking into the history of medicines because most of them came straight from "silly" home remedies like chewing on willow bark as a pain killer or drinking peppermint tea for a stomach ache. As science developed, we learned to isolate whatever made them work and make them more potent (like the salicylic acid in willow bark and peppermint, leading to aspirin). The effective compounds in the original plants are less concentrated and therefore less effective, some of them have unpleasant side effects, and some did what they thought they did but were also downright toxic (looking at you, belladonna), but modern medicines didn't spring out of nowhere and some of the old remedies are both safe and somewhat effective (like peppermint for a stomach ache).
Yes, it's easy to forget that they cleaned themselves, but it's even easier and just as prevelant to forget that they were still capable of observing cause and effect and that not ALL of their "medicine" was ineffective or dangerous.
Yes! some of those things are even still done today because they evidently work!
My doctor still recommemds some teas for period cramps. My mother's surgeon had her use chammomile compresses to help with swelling. Pepermint tea is effective for light stomach aches. Those things can be used with modern medicines, to provide better results or help those who are sensitive to some medications (which is often my case haha)
I can certainly tell you that many of my grandmother's home-made recipies helped me recover faster from sone illness than when I was ONLY treated with midern medications.
Here's what I know from my limited bank of knowledge about random medieval recipes:
Almond milk was used for baking when no fresh milk could be had in the colder months. The marrow from the bones thickened and added the complex proteins that milk had but almonds didn't. I can see the barley's starches adding a viscous quality but as for the rest of the ingredients I have absolutely no idea.
I think the "snow" was simply meringue.
I learned how to make soap from Fight Club (initially).
If someone "pisseth" blood it means they have an internal infection. If your immune system just happened to kick in and you didn't die, that's what separated "the men from the boys."
Not sure what "Peletry of Spain" is but willow can still be chewed for the natural aspirin contained within.
Verjus (juice from sour grapes, or apples?? can't remember) probably did help pimples a little because it's highly astringent.
Baking egg shells or seashells would create calcium carbonate but again, I have absolutely no idea what that would do for a nosebleed, other than give you something to do while waiting for it to stop.
I admit I got lost in the grocery list for plague water.
Bruised plantain herb is actually pretty useful for superficial wounds as it works as an antibacterial. That said, it's not going to cure rabies. It's also traditionally used as toilet paper.
My sister (a nurse) turned me onto clove oil when I had the worst toothache and it's the only thing outside of a pharmacy that helped. It completely numbs your mucus membranes and soft tissues. That said, there's no way it's going to help your cramps unless you're willing to go places with it where you shouldn't be putting foreign objects. Chamomile has never done a damn thing for me and it tastes like crap.
I imagine a warm tile shard to the nape of the neck might actually help stave off a little pain, but the rest of it -- just drink the beer and get rid of the flowers because the smell will make your migraine worse.
What the hell is fumitory??
If armpit hair is responsible for odor why the hell don't men get rid of their pit hair, being the more stink-prone?
Honey is incredibly antiseptic, and vinegar is used for cleaning and deodorizing, so I can see this working better than nothing on the teeth if you rinsed really well...but the wine? Uhhhhh nope.
A Scottish nun invented angling. I always thought that was cool.
That's as far as my degree in trivia takes me, thank you so much Karolina! These are always great, wicked fun.
petition to rebrand ginger wellness shots as plague water
I'm guessing the methods of preserving foods in the 17th century would be:
Pickling in vinegar or brine
Drying. e.g. Raisins.
Smoking. Not like a cigarette, but drying them in wood smoke.
Salting. e.g. Salted beef.
Storing in oil or alcohol.
Fermentation, e.g. Cheese or yoghurt.
And root cellars and the like (natural refrigeration methods), and baking things into something like a pie where the thick doughy shell acts as a preservative.
@@coor0kun those too.
@@coor0kun yes, and fruitcakes. dried fruit, high sugar content, drenched in rum, ...lasted forever.
@@siiiriously3226 that's my jam! And yes, terrible pun intended.
"Pisseth blood" had me CACKLING
i bet a glass of plague water would fix me
12:51 in the Arabian peninsula at 600ac people used to brush their teeth with a specific tree called Arak tree that smelled like menthol. Until this day we use this method as a natural teeth cleanse and it is so fresh and effective. It is of the main parts of the islamic hygiene.
that weird 'snow' recipe sounds like something my great grandmother would make as a desert.....🍧
The recipe for almond milk starts with boiling bones to make gelatin. They didn't have packages of gelatin back then.
Yeah, it just sounds like some gelatinous pudding.
I'm playing this for everyone who says 'I was born in the wrong era'
I think a maid in most cases was more of a helper in the household. The image we get often is shaped by the top one percent who were cared for by an army of people, kind of like a little company whose sole purpose was to make the boss comfortable and don’t really let them notice the household activities that much. For most people who could afford their own household I think it was more like a live in worker situation, more of an au pair type maybe in today‘s reality. And if we are realistic, many of us like to decide what is done and how under our own roof, buy stuff, pick the food and chose the recipes, when and how to clean, so it’s just natural that you would work in the household together with your maid and give her tasks instead of just letting her do whatever and sit in the living room. That also sounds like a pretty boring life anyway without all the entertainment we have today at our thumb.
I would love for a modern trained herbalist to react to this. Obviously some of these recipes are not going to do anything and some might make conditions worse, but I bet there is validity to a decent number of these herbal remedies.
Like Karolina points out, people then were not so different from us. They didn't want to smell and they weren't stupid. With access to modern pharmaceuticals that work better than many of these things, we don't have a need to keep herbal remedies in our cultural memory, but I'm sure a lot of them did help ailments a little.
I wonder at the reading thing, because from what I know literacy rates were about 50% (depending on location etc) in the 17th century. So while a good portion of the population couldn't read at all, there were certainly enough people who could read who bought and read these books. I'm thinking more along the lines of middle class people. I know that bookkeeping and inventory management for a shopkeeper as well as a household was a time consuming job. Especially if the inventory/pantry is perishable food. So it's pretty likely that lots of women knew at least enough about maths and reading to do those things.
I would LOVE a video where you try some of these recipes (probably the food ones, some of the medical ones seem sus)
A yes the meaty flavor of a glass of almond milk.
Really interesting! I also think the placebo effect was pretty powerful at the time - it's amazing what our brains can to manage pain and heal ailments. Also, when I have a migraine things that have mint, ginger and/or lavender really help with the surrounding sensory symptoms.
I am really liking this series
Absolutely! Me too! ❤
I don't know if you have it in Poland but many Czech cakes and such have fluffy beaten eggs in the cake batter and we call it snow :) there's other recipes where you mix the snow with sugar and such and bake it, or where it's put on top of something sweet (like milk rice pudding) and then baked, it's lovely!!
Basically any cake recipe I see here calls for "add beaten egg whites". I don't think I ever saw it as labeled with special name like "snow" tho.
Clary sage and Angelica archangelica might have some effect on reducing pain. Mixing them with eggs just makes them easier to consume.
There are lots of plants that we don't use medicinally anymore, so who knows if these things did something. Of course, there's a lot of research now about how effective the placebo is, so if you thought that something would cure your headache, it may well have done
Rain water is just cistern water.
9:36 'this one actually sounds possible (...) sounds reasonable, but i dont know the chemistry behind it, it probably is actually very bad for you' this was probably their exact line of reasoning lol
The rain water yuck and air pollution - giiirl nobody had electric heating then! Depending on the industry in thelocal area and the population that might be some pretty polluted rainwater... still better than still or flowing water by a mile, though! 😂
Good question about those who could & couldn’t read needing to cook or having servants. Or if servants could read. I was wondering about that too. Down the rabbit hole I go! 😂 Great episode!
No. 69 (nice 😏) is a deodorant recipe...
(...also yeah, agree with other commenters who said that middle to upper-middle class and upwards women would likely be able to read and write. Also, who's to say that the women at home wouldn't do the fishing themselves? 😉😉😂😺)
This was nice to listen to
A lot of these remedies did work to some extent, like the tree bark for a headache, but what was missing was the science behind it. Also alcohol for teeth makes more sense when you consider Listerine burns because it contains alcohol, although a different type. Or penicillin was discovered in specific mold. A lot of the medicine we have today comes from scientifically studying things that actually worked and then being given the proper dosage and figuring out why it works. But, I would like to see a practitioner of homeopathic medicine start recommending using hares blood to clear freckles and how people would react. 🤣
Actually the "for stench under the arm holes" a homemade alcohol wipe does work, it does have to be used multiple times a day. I cut an old tee shirt into wipe size pieces and put rubbing alcohol (don't want to waste the wine) and the rags in a Mason jar w/lid to soak. It kills the bacteria causing the "stench". Even if you leave the hair under the "arm holes". 😁
So it’s interesting. Some of the ingredients in the plague water is really good for inflammation but also have anti-microbial properties.
I have rheumatoid arthritis. Can you imagine?
Thank you!
Some new recipes I really want to try! ❤❤❤❤❤
P.S. It inspired me to make some clary sage, rosemary and marjoram tea 💗
I really enjoy watching your videos. I am very impressed with how well your english is. Looking forward to your next video. Outstanding work. Keep it up
Interesting Recipes!
Pellitory of spain, or Anacyclus pyrethrum, is also known as Spanish chamomile or akarkara, and is still used medicinally.
18:30 it is wildly known that Arabian heritage needed males and female to remove armpit and pubic hair
As a skincare nerd I’d say that vinegar is basically a form of AHA acid 🤔
Ladies absolutely made those medicines! A key way women could gift was to gift medical recipes and treatments. They are supposed to be caring for their families and there's no NHS remember.
Books like that still exist. I remember my grandmother having books like those.
I have a couple from the 90s…
I love learning about history but I’m sure glad I live in modern times.
I mean my mom's solution to helping aid a migraine is a cold coca cola and given that three different doctors told me of cold liquids and caffeine, plus cold compresses, ao maybe it isn't that far off. Our ancestors were trying to diy what chemists are doing in labs nowadays.
I'd guess the middle and trading classes would really use the books, and maybe the maids in some of the household were taught to read
Love it!
Fenugreek might work for cramps as it has magnesium in it and you can use magnesium topically for muscle cramps
We all get plague sometimes...😅
'Go Vegan!!’ I love it!
Wormwood, though toxic, is known as a natural anthelmintic (wormer) and you can get it in some "natural remedy" worming treatments. It's quite a common plant too and grows well in patches of wasteland that are left undisturbed. If you can get hold of a copy, there's a little paperback book printed by Readers Digest called "What Our Grandmothers Knew" and that's got all sorts of remedies and household things passed down. I'll see if I can find my copy and put a f ew here for you when I do.
I wish there were visuals with this.
Oh I recognise how so many of these would've helped! So Clary Sage is good for menstruation complaints so by back pain they mean cramps. Burnt eggshell creates lime, when they say its black the charcoal portion would clog too ... They're huffing lime and charcoal.
Great episode 👍 you should really put numbers on the titles and or thumbnails of these episodes. Sometimes I don't click because I don't notice it's a new episode
About the plague water, while i see the connection between its ingredients and those old beaked masks, the thing is, that it also sounds like a solid vitamin bomb because of the ginger along with a mild worm killer because of all those essiential oils from spices, so it makes a little bit of a sense. If your body doesn't have to fight 10 other things caused by the vitamin deficiency and 3 different kinds of stomach parasites at all times because you take something like this the way we take multivitamins today, you are less likely do die because of any random infection showing up in the town
Pisseth is crazy 😂
Some of these sound like wellness advice you'd find on Instagram or TikTok nowadays. And that is so sad. It just tells you the state of misinformation we live in 😂😢
Doctors at that time also used to be astrologers, so... yes, medicine in that era was more than questionable. That's why Molière wrote such aggressive comedies targeting doctors
Co powiesz o studiu filmów rysunkowych w Bielsku-Białej?
Has your antique home been tested for lead? Yiu said yiu get headaches
If you guys liked this stuff, check out Ann Reardon's (How To Cook That) "200 year old recipes" playlist!
I wonder what people in the future will think of our current remedies. They might feel sorry for us since rabies is basically a death sentence for animals and people. They'll talk about how smart we were for knowing it must be stopped before it gets to the brain, but they'll take pride in knowing they found the better way to fight it, perhaps even reversing its effects after it's "too late." Advancement might not happen in America though. We're on our way back to the 19th century over here.
theory: for middle class people to buy their housekeepers... and for industrialists moving to the country after making money sk they didn',t gave all the little shops?
First of May - MAYDAY
You should offer V neck t-shirts for women on your store.
Anyone remember Kim Kardashians vampire facial? I wonder if she used rabbit blood…
I’m getting some hairs blood right away
Look up Within Heaven's Gates by Rebecca Springer.😇
Girl, change the thumbnail! Thought it was old vid again :(
karolina, do you accept recommendations? i have some awful-mazing books self publushed by wanna be regency and georgian influencers travelling...
Women would have socialized and shared recipes and folk cures. I don't know about the food, but I think most medicine was worse than the disease.
they, i believe, liked a smooth round hairline... so like even a hint of widow's peak would be plucked... that's one of the things maria antonua was praised for... her wide large forehead!
That 17th century almond milk sounds like something I would make to prank a vegan! 😂😂😂😂😂
And why not add nuts to a dish that nut allergics will eat, it might kill them. Fun. 😂/s
Hair under the armpits does make you stink more. I think we’ve gone beyond theory.
Yep! I've noticed it for sure on myself when I don't shave for a while. Bacteria has more to cling to? I don't know why exactly but it's interesting and unsurprising that they had ideas about it back then too!
first!!
😇
Nope, dating back then was not in anyway similar to now. Please qualify your videos instead of making bold unsupported assertions to satisfy raging feminists in the comments 😂
Your claim about the 1950s dating culture was the height of idiocy. If you want to be educated on the history please let me know 😅
I don’t think some of these were as silly as they sound on the surface.