–1—An excellent damask powder
Take a half a pound of iris petals, four ounces of rose petals, one ounce of cloves, two ounces of lignum rhodium, one ounce and a half of storax, and ten grains each of musk and civet, beat and incorporate them well together.
–2—An excellent hand water, or washing water, very cheap
Take a gallon of fair water, one handful of lavender flowers, a few cloves, some iris root powder and four ounces of Beniamin {frankincense} distill the water in an ordinary leaden still. You may distill a second water by a new infusion of water upon the waste. A little of this will sweeten a basin of water for your table.
–3—A ball to remove stains from linen
Take four ounces of white, hard soap beat it in a mortar with two small lemons that you have sliced and as much rock alum as a hazelnut. Then roll it up into a ball rub the stain with the ball, and after fetch {rinse} it out with warm water if need be.
–4—A sweet and delicate pomander
Take two ounces of labdanum, one ounce each of frankincense, and storax, six grains of musk, six grains of civet, five grains of ambergris, the weight of a groat {approx. 3 grams for Elizabethen groats} each of calamus aromaticus {sweet flag} and lignum aloe {agar wood}. Beat all of these together in a hot mortar with a hot pestle until they become a paste then wet your hand with rosewater and roll up the paste quickly.
–5—To take stains out of one’s hands presently
This is done with the juice of sorrel. Washing the stained place with it.
–6—To remove spots or freckles from the face or hands
Take the sap that issues out of a birch tree in great abundance when you tap it in March or April with a receiver of a glass jar set underneath the hole to receive it. The sap removes spots most excellently and makes the skin very clear. This sap will dissolve pearls, a secret not known to many.
–7—A white fucus {rouge} or beauty for the face
The jawbones of a hog or sow well burnt, then beaten and sieved through a fine sieve and after ground upon a granite or Serpentine stone is an excellent fucus being laid on with the oil of white poppy.
–8—A delicate washing ball
Take three ounces of oris {iris}, half an ounce of cypress, two ounces of Calamus aromaticus {sweet flag}, one ounce of rose petals, two ounces of lavender flowers, and beat all these together in a mortar then sieve them through a fine sieve. Then scrape some castile soap and dissolve it with some rose water, then incorporate all your powders together by mixing them well in a mortar.
–9—Damask powder
Take five ounces of iris, two ounces of Cypress, two ounces of sweet fig, half an ounce of cloves, one ounce of frankincense, one ounce of rose petals, one ounce of Storax calamitum, half an ounce of spiked flowers and mix them well together.
–10—To keep the teeth both white and sound
Take a quart of honey, as much vinegar, and half so much white wine boil them together and wash your teeth with the mixture now and then.
–11—To delay heat and clear the face
Take three pints of conduit water, boil within two ounces of French barley. Change the water and put the barley in again. Repeat this as many times as you need to until your water runs clear. Boil the last three pints down to a quart and mix half a pint of white wine to it and when it is cold squeeze the juice of two or three good lemons into it and use the same for the Morphew {skin eruptions, possibly leprous} heat of the face and hands and to clear the skin.
–12—Skin kept white and clean
Wash the face and body of a nursing child with breast milk or cow’s milk. Mix with water every night and the child’s skin will stay fair and clear and resist sun burning.
–13—An excellent Pomatum to clear the skin.
Wash sow’s grease in dew gathered in May that has been clarified in the sun until it is exceedingly white. Then take marshmallow roots, scraping off all of the outsides, then make thin slices of them and mix them and set them to macerate in a simmering water bath and remove the scum that rises till it is thoroughly clarified and will come to rope when drizzled from a spoon and then strain it and put now and then a spoonful of may dew therein beating it till it gets cold and often change of May dew then throw away that dew. Put it in a glass jar covering it with May dew and so reserve it to your use. Let the mallow roots be two or three days dried in the shade before you use them. This I had of a great professor of art and for a rare and dainty secret as the best salve this day in use.
–14—Another mineral salve for the face
Incorporate with a wooden pestle in a wooden mortar with great labor four ounces of sublimate {does not specify sublimate of what} and one ounce of mercury at least six or eight hours, you cannot use too much labor to do this. Then with many changes of cold water by ablution in a glass jar take away the salts from the sublimate and change your water twice every day at the least in season or eight days (the more the better) it will be dulcified and then it is prepared lay it on with the oil of the white poppy.
–15—To remove chilblains from the hands or feet
Boil half a peck of oats in a quart of water until they are mostly dry. Then having first anointed your hands with some good ointment and well rubbed them, hold them within the oats as hot as you can stand. Cover the bowl you put your hands in with a double cloth to keep in the steam of the oats. Do this three or four times, and you shall find the effect the same. Oats will serve to be refreshed with fresh water three or four times.
—16—To help a face that is red or pimpled
Dissolve common salt in the juice of lemons and with a linen cloth pat the patient’s face that is full of heat or pimples. It cures in a few dressings.
–17—Another way
Take those little whelks or shells which some call Ginny money wash five or six of them and crush them to fine powder and then infuse the juice of lemons with them and it will presently boil. But if it offers to boil out of your glass jar then stop the mouth of it with your finger or blow into it. This will in a short time become an ointment which you will must anoint the redness or pimples of the face. Oftentimes in a day you will find relief. As the ointment dries put more juice of lemons into it. This of an outlandish gentlewoman and it is an assured remedy. If the redness is not very extreme some have found by experience that bathing of the face with hot vinegar every night when they go to bed does mildly repel the humor.
–18—Another way
Quilt bay salt well dried and powdered in double linen socks of a large size. Let the patient wear them in wide hose and shoes day and night. In fourteen days, or until they are well. Every morning and evening let him dry his socks by the fire and put them on again. This helped Mister Foster and an attorney of the Common Pleas within these last few years but now deceased, whose face was for many years together of an exceeding high and furious color of my own knowledge and has spent much money in physic without any success at all until he obtained this remedy the patient must not take any wet must not get his feet wet during this cure.
–19—Another very good way
Take a half a pound of white distilled vinegar, two new laid eggs in their shells, two spoonfuls of sulfur, and let these macerate in the vinegar for three days then take out the eggs and prick them full of holes with a needle, but not too deep to keep the yolk from coming out then let that liquid also mix with the vinegar and strain it all through a fine cloth. Tie up the sulfur in the cloth like a little ball dip this ball in the strained liquid when you use it and pat it on the spots three or four times every day and this will cure any red face in twelve or fourteen days. Some do also commend the same for an approved remedy against lesions. The sulfur ball must be kept in a tight jar away from air.
-20—How to take away any pimple from the face
Sulphur ground with the oil of turpentine and applied to any pimple for one hour makes the flesh to rise. Which being anointed with the thick oil of butter that rises in the morning from new milk simmered a little overnight will heal and seal away in a few days leaving a fair skin behind. This is a good skin salve.
–21—To help any lesions, sunburn, itch or red face
Steep two sliced lemons that are large and fair in a pint of conduit water. Leave them four or five days in the infusion covering the water. Then strain the water and dissolve therein sublimate {of what is not specified} the quantity of a hazelnut. (some hold a dram a good proportion to a pint of water) finely powdered. Let the patient wet a cloth with it and rub the place where the wound is every morning and every evening until the color does please her. You may make the same stronger or weaker according to good discretion
–22—For the lesions
Take a pint of distilled vinegar, add two new laid eggs, whole in their shells, three yellow sorrel roots cleaned and sliced, two spoonfuls of the flowers of brimstone {sulfur} and so let all rest three days. Then use this liquid with a cloth rubbing the lesion three or four times every day. In three or four days it commonly helps. Put some bran in your cloth before you moisten it to bind it in the form of a little ball. This of Master Rich of Lee who helped himself and a gallant lady therewith in a few days.
–23—To take away freckles from the face
Wash your face in the waning of the moon with a sponge. Morning and evening with a distillation of water with elderflower leaves. Letting the same dry into the skin your water must be distilled in May. This is from a traveler who has cured himself this way.
–24—To cure any extreme bruise from a fall on the face or any other part of the body.
Presently after the fall make a great fire and apply hot cloths one after another continuously with the patient standing near the fire for one hour and a half or until the swelling has gone down. This I know proved with good success in a maid that fell down a set of stairs where all her face was extremely disfigured Some say that the same may be performed with wet cloths dipped in hot in hot water and wrung out again before application, then to take away the changeable colors which do usually follow all bruises.
Clean the root of a green or growing Lily flower beat it with red rose water and grind it until it comes to a salve. Then apply the same and in a few hours it takes away all the colors, but if it lies too long it will raise pimples and therefore so soon as the colors be vanished immediately remove the salve.
–25—How to keep the teeth clean
Burn the tops and branches of rosemary into ashes and to one part of those add one part of burnt alum. Mix them well together and with thy finger, first moistened a little with thy spit rub all thy teeth over a long while every morning till they are clean but not until the gums bleed. Then sip up some fair water or white wine gargling the same up and down your mouth for a while. Then dry your mouth with a towel. This is an honest gentleman and painful gatherer of physical receipts.
–26—Sweet and delicate dentrifices or rubbers for the teeth
Dissolve in four ounces of warm water three or four drams of gum tragacanth and in one night this will become a thick substance like jelly. Add to the same the powder of finely ground alabaster that has been sieved. Then roll the mixture into little round rods the diameter of a child’s arrow and four or 5 inches in length. Also if you temper roses or some other color that is not hurtful they will show full of pleasing veins. These you may sweeten either with rosewater, civet, or musk.
If your teeth be very scaly let some expert barber first take off the scales with his instruments then you may keep them clean by rubbing them with the previously mentioned rolls. Those miserable experiences that I have seen in some of my nearest friends I am enforced to admonish all gentlewomen to be careful how they suffer their teeth to be cleaned and made white with any Aqua fortis (Nitric acid) which is the barber’s usual cleaner. Unless the same is both well delayed and carefully applied she may happen within a few dressings to be forced to borrow a set of teeth to eat her dinner unless her gums to help her the better.
–27—A delicate stove to sweat in
I know that many gentlewomen as well as for the clearing of their skins as cleaning of their bodies do now and then delight to sweat for which purpose I have set down this manner of following as the best that I ever observed. Put into a brass pot some good content such as portions of sweet herbs of such kind as shall be most appropriate for your infirmity with some reasonable quantity of water. Close the same with a good cover and well sealed with some paste made of flour and egg whites. At some point of the cover you must let in a leaden pipe, the entrance whereof must also be well sealed. This pipe must be conveyed through the side of the chimney where the pot stands in a thick hollow stake, of a bathing tub crossed with hoops according to the usual manner. In the top which you may cover with a sheet at your pleasure. Now the steam of the pot passing through the pipe under the false bottoms of the bathing tub, which must be bored with big holes, will breathe so sweet and warm a vapor upon your body. Get fresh air by holding your head outside the tub as you sit there in you shall sweat most temperately and continue the same a long time without fainting and this is performed with a small charcoal fire maintained under the pot for this purpose note that the room should be closed where you place your bathing tub lest any sudden cold should happen to offend you while your body is made open and porous to the air.
–28—Diverse sorts of sweet or hand waters made quickly with the extracted oils of spices
First you shall understand that whenever you draw any of the previously mentioned oils of cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, or such like that, you shall have also two quarts, or a gallon, or more or less, according to the quantity of which you draw at once of excellent sweet washing water for your table. Some do keep the same for their broths. Otherwise they should use some of the same kind of spice but if you take three or four drops only of the oil of cloves, mace, or nutmegs, for cinnamon oil is too costly to spend this way and mingle the same with a pint of fair water stirring them a little while together in a glass jar having a narrow mouth till they have in some measure incorporated themselves together. You shall find a very pleasing and delightful water to wash with and so you may always furnish yourself with sweet water of several kinds before such time as your guests will be ready to sit down. I speak not here of the oil of spike which will extend very far this way, both because every gentlewoman does not like so strong a scent for that the same is elsewhere already commended by another author. Yet I must needs acknowledge it to be the cheaper way for that I assure myself there may be five or six gallons of sweet water made with one ounce of the oil which you may buy ordinarily for a groat at the most.
–29—An excellent sweet water for a casting bottle.
Take three drams of oil of spikenard, one dram of oil of thyme, one dram of oil of lemons, one dram of oil of clove and mixt them together. Then take one grain of civet and three grains of the previously mentioned composition well mixed together temper them well in a silver spoon with your finger. Then put the same into a silver ball, filling it slowly with a little rose water until all the oil is washed out of the spoon and into the ball and then do the same by washing the same out of the ball with a little rose water at once till all the scent begun putting the rose water still in a glass when you have tempered the same in the ball sufficiently a pint of rose water will be sufficient to mingle with the said proportion and if you find the same not strong enough of the civet then you may to every set pint put one and a half or two grains of civet to the weight of three grains of the afore said composition of oils.
–30—To color black hair chestnut
This is done with oil of vitriol {sulfuric acid} but you must do it very carefully not touching the skin.
—31—A present and delicate perfume
Lay two or three drops of liquid amber upon a glowing coal or a piece of lignum aloe, lignum rhodium, or storax.
–32—To renew the scent of a pomander
Take one grain of civet and two of musk, or if you double the proportion {Probably the musk} it will be so much the sweeter. Grind them upon a stone with a little rose water. After wetting your hands with rose water you may work the same into your pomander this is a slight to pass off an old pomander, but my intention is honest.
–33—How to gather and clarify May dew
When there has fallen no rain the night before take a clean and large sponge outside the next morning. You may gather the dew from sweet herbs, grass, or corn. Strain your dew and expose it to the sun in glass jars covered with papers or parchment pricked full of holes, strain it often keeping it in the sun and in a hot place till the same grows white and clear which will require the best part of the summer. Some commend May dew gathered from fennel and Celadine to be most excellent for sore eyes. Some commend the same prepared as above rose water for preserving of fruits, flowers, et cetera.
–34—Diverse excellent scents for gloves, with their proportions and other circumstances, with the manner of perfuming.
The violet, the orange, the lemon, duly proportioned with other scents perform this well. So like of labadanum, storax, Beniamin, etc.
The manner is this: first lay your umber upon a few coals until it begins to crack like lime, then let it cool by taking away the coals. Then grind the same with some yellow ochre until you perceive a right color for a glove. With this mixture wash over your glove with a little hair brush upon a smooth stone in every seam and all over and then hang your gloves to dry upon a line.
Then with gum tragacanth dissolved in some rose water and ground with a little oil of Ben or sweet almonds upon a stone. Wipe over your gloves in every place with the gum and oil so ground together. Do this with a little sponge but be sure that the gloves be first thoroughly dry and the color well rubbed and beaten out of the glove, then let them hang again until they are dry which will be a short time. Then if you will have your glove to lie smooth and look good, go over it again with your sponge and the mixture of gum and oil and dry the glove yet once again.
Then grind upon your stone two or three grains of good musk with half a spoonful of rose water and with a very little piece of a sponge take up the composition a small amount at a time and so lay it upon your glove laying upon the stone.
Pick and strain your gum tragacanth before you use it. Perfume but the one side of your glove at once and then hang it up to dry. Then finish the other side.
Ten grains of Musk will give sufficient perfume to eight pair of gloves. Note also that this perfume is done upon a thin lamb leather glove if you work upon a kids skin or goat skin which is usually leather for rich perfumes then you must add more quantity of the oil of ben to your gum and go over the glove twice.
–35—Sweet bags to lie among linens
Fill your bags only with candlewood finely beaten and it will give an excellent scent to your linens
–36—To make hair a fair yellow or golden color
The last water that is drawn from honey being a deep red color performs the same excellently, but the same has a strong smell and therefore must be sweetened with some aromatical body, or else the hair being first cleaned, washed, and then moistened by a good fire in warm alum water with a sponge. You may moisten the same in a decoction of turmeric, rhubarb, or the bark of the barberry tree and so will receive a most fair and beautiful color. The dogberry is also an excellent berry to make a golden liquor with for this purpose. Beat your alum to powder and when the water is ready to simmer dissolve in it four ounces alum to two quarts of water will be sufficient. Let it boil a while, strain it and this is your alum liquor whenever you must first prepare the hair.
–37—How to color the hair or beard into a chestnut color in half an hour.
Take one part of lead calcined with sulfur and one part of quicklime, temper them somewhat thin with water. Rub the mix into the hair chafing it well in and let it dry fifteen minutes or thereabouts. Then wash the same off with fair water until clean. Do the last wash with soap and water and it will be a very natural hair color. The longer it lays upon the hair the browner it will be. This doesn’t color the skin at all yet it lasts very long in the hair.
Æduin of Skye 