Thompson Writing Program Faculty Database
Thompson Writing Program
Arts & Sciences
Duke University

 HOME > Arts & Sciences > TWP > Faculty    Search Help Login pdf version printable version 

Publications [#328121] of Seth S LeJacq

Journal Articles

  1. Lejacq, SS. "Roy porter student prize essay the bounds of domestic healing: Medical recipes, storytelling and surgery in early modern England." Social History of Medicine 26.3 (August, 2013): 451-468. [doi]
    (last updated on 2023/07/05)

    Abstract:
    This paper investigates ways in which early modern English recipe collections constructed domestic medicine as broader and more powerful than is often appreciated. It shows that their compilers frequently selected recipes that promised to allow them to address a wide range of surgical ailments, to heal serious surgical conditions medicinally, and to avoid invasive interventions. Claims of remedies' virtues and stories of their successes imagined domestic medicine not only as a 'first port of call', but also as a potent counterpart to the work of practitioners; a last resort when practitioners had failed; and as an alternative to the knife. Using the writings of the surgeon John Woodall, it argues that surgeons were sensitive to the attitudes and preferences that motivated this collection. In seeking to discipline surgery, Woodall invoked the stereotypical gentleness of women's and domestic medicine in an effort to inculcate greater discernment in the use of violence. © 2013 The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved.


Duke University * Arts & Sciences * TWP * Faculty * Staff * Reload * Login