474J T.K. Doctor in physick
The Kitchin-physician: or, A guide for good-housewives in maintaining their families in health. Wherein are described the natures, causes, and symptoms of all diseases inward and outward, incident to the bodies of men, women, and children. Prescribing natural, useful, an proper medicines both in physick and chirurgery, as well for the prevention as speedy cure of the said distempers. Adorned with sculptures, shewing the proper place of every distemper in the body. Published for the common good of city & country, by T.K. doctor in physick
London : printed for Samuel Lee, stationer, over against the Post-Office in Lumbard-street, 1680.
Price $3,700
Duodecimo 14 x 8 cm. A-F12. First and only edition. This copy is bound in its original full calf binding sewn on white alum tawed supports. This copy would best described as tatty, the edges are fragil and some pages have tears, not effecting legibility. It collates complete yet the title calls for ‘sculptures’ of the five recorded copies only the Sloan copy seems to have any plates and that is The folded plate is a frontispiece captioned ‘Kitchin Physition’ with the undated imprint of Samuel Lee.
Extremely Rare five copies located worldwide: British Library, Oxford, Sloan collection,&
US: Huntington Library, and the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Here from the Authors preface:
I Have here set before your view, a prospect of the rich Garden of Nature, adorned with nothing but its own simple qualities; which at first was not obliged to any of the Learned to Translate it into Galenical Compositi∣ons, or any Artificial Experiments, but was made use on by our fore-Fathers, for their relief in Sickness and Malady, long before Physick was brought into a Professi∣on, and the Professors of it courted by the Ignorant, when they received (in ordinary and common Distempers) little more than a bare Complement from them, save one∣ly referring them to their Mother Nature, the true and original Healer of such Di∣seases. And although this small Attempt may receive Opposition from some mean∣spirited Physitians, whose Interest may be invaded by the Publication of it, and who are Impostors of Physick, with pretended Universal Medicines: Yet my design is, (though bred up a Physitian) to leave this as a Legacy to my Country, before my gray hairs go down to the Grave, purely to make them their own Physitians in ca∣ses not dubious, nor requiring the utmost improvement of Nature, into a well-digested and consulted conclusion of Art.
Here is an example of a ‘cure’
12. To take away Pockholes, and make the skin smooth. Take of the Oyl of St. Johns-herb one ounce, Venetian Turpentine half an ounce; melt it in a glazed pot, and as soon as it begins to boil, take it from the fire, and work it into a Salve; anoint therewith the scars and spots, continuing to do so till the holes be stopp’d. Or, take the stilled water of the white of Eggs, boyled hard with shells; of Snails, of Calves, of Weathers, of Goats-feet, of Bean-flour, Dragonwort, (i. e. Serpentaria.) These waters you shall use single, or mingled together, and with that bathe the face when you go to bed, having prepared the same with the steam or smoak of warm water: or, decoction of the chaff of Oats, Oyl of Dates, Flower-de-luce, Myrrha, (Pistacies.)
Or, take three Ounces of the Oyl of Flower-de-luce, Rosen, Capons-grease, of each one ounce; wash them well in Rose-water: add thereunto four whites of Eggs half boiled in their shells, Oyl of Sweet and Bitter Almonds planched, of each one ounce; pound them in a Marble Morter, mingling therewith a quarter of an ounce of the powder of Melon-seed; work it to a Salve.
ESTC System No. 006084513
ESTC Citation No. R18406
Author – personal LinkT. K., Doctor in physick.
Title LinkThe Kitchin-physician: or, A guide for good-housewives in maintaining their families in health. Wherein are described the natures, causes, and symptoms of all diseases inward and outward, incident to the bodies of men, women, and children. Prescribing natural, useful, an proper medicines both in physick and chirurgery, as well for the prevention as speedy cure of the said distempers. Adorned with sculptures, shewing the proper place of every distemper in the body. Published for the common good of city & country, by T.K. doctor in physick.
Publisher/year LinkLondon : printed for Samuel Lee, stationer, over against the Post-Office in Lumbard-street, 1680.
Physical descr. [10], 134 p., [1] leaf of plates : ill. ; 12⁰.
General note Frontis. = plate.
Citation/references Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), K20
Surrogates Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. University Microfilms, 1966. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. (Early English books, 1641-1700; 213:1).
Loc. of filmed copy L.
Subject LinkMedicine, Popular — Early works to 1800.
Copies – Brit.Isles LinkBritish Library
LinkOxford University, Bodleian Library
LinkSir John Soane’s Museum
Copies – N.America LinkHenry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
LinkU.S. National Library of Medicine
Electronic location Early English Books Online (EEBO) ; { Reproduction of original in British Library. }
William Lawson fl. 1618.
The Countrie Housewifes Garden, was the first horticultural work written specifically for women (there would not be another in English for a century). The ‘sound, clear, natural wit’ manifested in it was praised by John Beale forty years later (Beale, 14),
273J William Lawson (1553/4–1635) & Simon Harward, (active 1572-1614)
A new orchard, and garden: or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a rich orchard: particularly in the north, and generally for the whole common-wealth, as in nature, reason, situation, and all probability, may and doth appeare. With the country-housewifes garden for herbs of common use: their virtues, seasons, profits, ornaments, variety of knots, models for trees, and plots for the best ordering of grounds and walkes. As also, the husbandry of bees, with their severall uses and annoyances. All being the experience of forty and eight yeares labour, and now the second time corrected and much enlarged, by William Lawson. Whereunto is newly added the art of propagating plants; with the true ordering of all manner of fruits, in their gathering, carrying home, and preservation. [Divisional title page on leaf H4r: The country houswives garden. & Most profitable new treatise, from approved experience of the art of propagating plants. By Simon Harvvard]
London: printed by W. Wilson, for E. Brewster, and George Sawbridge, at the Bible on Ludgate-Hill, neere Fleet-bridge 1652. $2,100
Quarto. 18 x 14 cm . signatures; A-N⁴ . “The country house-wifes garden” (p. [57]-92)–has special t.p. It has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Markham. cf. Dict. nat. biog.
“A most profitable new treatise … of the art of propagating plants. By Simon Harward”: pages 93-103: “The husband mans fruitfull orchard,” authorship unknown: p. 105-112. ¶ [on page 48 the number ‘4’ is typeset upside down and located above and after the number ‘8’. Page 49 is typeset as ’47’.
Running title reads: An ‘Orchard.’ Many woodcut floriated initials, title with woodcut scene of men working in an orchard (repeated in text), full-page plan of an estate depicting layout of various parcels and gardens. Lawson tell us that he instructed the publisher to expend ‘much cost and care … in having the Knots and Models by the best Artizan cut’ there are two large woodcuts of trees, five pages of designs for knot gardens. Woodcut of a house for bee-hives, smaller cuts of tools etc in text. General browning, (as are all the copies I have seen (5 or more) one leaf (full page estate plan))cropped close without loss. The final has a rough/amature repair. It is bound is quarter blue morocco calf over paper boards from the 19th century.
This is an early edition (stated as: ‘2nd time corr. and much enl’.) of this horticultural classic, first published in 1618, and notable for the inclusion of Lawson’s Country House-Wife’s Garden, the first book on the subject specifically written for women, and one of the most delightful gardening books in the language, illustrated with the oft-reproduced cuts of knot designs.
Lawson was a long-lived Yorkshire parson and a real ‘hands on’ gardener: he declares his book to be written from ‘my meer and sole experience, without respect to any former-written Treatise’. His two passions were orchards and bees and he covers all aspects of his subjects, soil management, planting and pruning, the construction of beehives, the control of various ‘nuisances’ (including birds, deer and moles) and the harvesting of fruits and honey.
This book refers at times to the difficulties of the local environment and warns his fellow northern gardeners to:
‘meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with
Quinces, which will not like our cold parts’.
Further more, northern related he explains how important it is to keep bees
in weatherproof accommodation using a good northern term to explain that the .
‘nesh Bee can neither abide cold or wet’!
Layson’s prose are a true pleasure to read, ‘your trees standing in comely order which way soever you look … your borders on every side hanging and drooping with Feberries, Raspberries, Barberries, Currents and the roots of your trees powdred with Strawberries, red, white and green, what pleasure is this?’
Lawson’s summary of the satisfaction to be gained from gardening remains as true today as it was for his seventeenth century readers: ‘whereas every other pleasure commonly fills some one of or senses, and that only, with delight, this makes all our senses swim in pleasure’.
‘To conclude, what joy may you have, that you living to such an age, shall see the blessings of God on your labours while you live, and leave behind you to heirs or successors (for God will make heires) such a work, that many ages after your death, shall record your love to their Country? And the rather, when you consider to what length of time your worke is like to last’
ESTC R23999; Wing (2nd ed.) L731; Hunt botanical cat. 258; Henrey 228n, p. 160; Rohde, p. 54; British Bee Books 20; Poynter, p. 176. .
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/title/151752#page/14/mode/1up
{ Comprised of reissues of the following, “The English hous-wife”, 5th ed. 1653 (Wing M630); ” “A new orchard, and garden; … by William Lawson”, 1653 (Wing L731).
/Five libraries hold copies of this edition in the US!, Boston Public, Folger, Harvard, Yale,
Also see:
The History of Beekeeping in English Gardens
Penelope Walker and Eva CraneGarden History Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 2000), pp. 231-261 (31 pages) Published By: The Gardens Trust
https://doi.org/10.2307/1587272https://www.jstor.org/stable/1587272
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