[Sca-cooks] Horse Dung and Pregnancy

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings! I think I've found one recipe for women in labor that 
contains horse dung. There may be another, earlier recipe but this one 
is from "The Receipt Book of Ann Blencowe", 1695.

To make ye horse dunge water.

Take horse dunge & putt to it so much Ale as will make it like hasty 
puding, and put it into your still. Then putt on ye topp one pound of 
reakell, and a quarter of a pound of genger in powder, and a quarter of 
a pound of sweet anniseeds, and so distill all these together. This 
water is good for women in labor and in childbed, for Agues and feavers 
and all distempers.

There are numerous recipes for concoctions relating to women and their 
ailments or conditions in Robert May's "The English Housewife". They are 
in the physical receipt section and deal with topics such as increasing 
women's milk, drying it up, poultice for sore breasts, for ease in 
childbearing, for a dead child in the womb, a general purge for a woman 
in child bed, etc.

I've come across two recipes using doves' dung. One is in the aforesaid 
"English Housewife"

May also has a recipe for the "flux" which includes a dried, grated up, 
stag's pizzle, drunk in either beer, wine or ale.

Think I'll go have dinner now...

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/
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