‘Herbals she peruseth’: reading medicine in early modern England

In 1631, R ichard B rathwaite penned a conduct manual for ‘ E nglish Gentlewomen’. In B rathwaite's mind, the ideal E nglish gentlewoman was not only chaste, modest and honourable but also an avid reader. In fact, B rathwaite specifically recommends E nglish gentlewomen to first peruse herbals and then to deepen their medical knowledge via conference. Centred on the manuscript notebooks of two late seventeenth‐century women, M argaret B oscawen (d. 1688) and E lizabeth F reke (1642–1714), this article explores women and ‘medical reading’ in early modern England. It first demonstrates that whilst both women consulted herbals by contemporary authors such as J ohn G erard and N icholas C ulpeper, their modes of reading could not be more different. Where F reke ruminated, digested and abstracted from G erard's large tome, B oscawen made practical lists from C ulpeper's The E nglish Physitian . Secondly, the article shows that both supplemented their herbal reading with a range of other vernacular medical texts including printed medical recipe books, contemporary pharmacopoeia and surgical handbooks. Early modern E nglish women's medical reading, I argue, was nuanced, sophisticated and diverse. Furthermore, I contend that well‐informed readers like B oscawen and F reke made smart medical consumers and formidable negotiators in their medical encounters.