582J William Walwyn (1600-1681)

Physick for families. Or, The new, safe and powerful way of physick, upon constant proof established; enabling every one, at sea or land, by the medicines herein mentioned, to cure themselves, their friends and relations, in all distempers and diseases. Without any the trouble, hazzard, pain or danger of purgers, vomiters, bleedings, issues, glisters, blisters, opium, antimony and quicksilver, so full of perplexity in sickness. By physitian William Walwyn.

London : printed, by J.R. and are to be sold by the author, 1696.

Octavo signatures: A-G8 ([16], 144p. 🙂 Lacking a frontispiece portrait of William Walwyn engraved by R. White . Third edition, first printed in 1674. 

This copy is bound in a red textured cloth with “Birmingham Medical Institute” on the spine as well as “Walwyn’s Physic-1696.” This copy is lacking the portrait  which is supplied in xerox.

The new, safe, and powerful !

William Walwyn, the son of Robert Walwyn, was born in Newland, Worcestershire, 1600. As a young man he was apprenticed to a silkman in Paternoster Row. Later he started his own business and joined the Merchant Adventurers Company.

As a Puritan, Walwyn supported the Parliamentary army during the Civil War. In 1645 he published a pamphlet, England’s Lamentable Slavery. In 1646 Walwyn joined with John Lilburne, and John Wildman to form a new political party called the Levellers. Their political programme included: voting rights for all adult males, annual elections, complete religious freedom, an end to the censorship of books and newspapers, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, trial by jury, an end to taxation of people earning less than ÂŁ30 a year and a maximum interest rate of 6%.

Walwyn became the leader of the Levellers in London and in September 1647 helped organise a petition demanding male suffrage. Walwyn, along with John Lilburne and Richard Overton, published An Agreement of the People. When the reforms were opposed by officers in the New Model Army, Walwyn called for the soldiers to revolt. On 28th March 1649, Walwyn was arrested and charged with advocating communism. After being brought before the Council of State he was sent to the Tower of London.

On his release The Leveller leaders were released from prison in November 1649 following Lilburne’s trial and acquittal. Walwyn pledged his loyalty to the Commonwealth by taking the Oath of Engagement and returned to quiet family life at his home in Moorfields. He became interested in medicine and began practising as a physician during the 1650s, publishing several medical tracts and handbooks. He died in January 1681.

Three Copies in N.America: U.S. National Library of Medicine , University of Minnesota , UCLA

Wing (2nd ed.), W690 

See:  Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550–1800, ed. Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell (Manchester, 2013)

the blog The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Science, and Medicine, ed. Amanda Hebert, Elaine Leong, and Lisa Smith, http://recipes.hypotheses.org.

Leigh Whaley, Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800 (New York, N.Y., 2011)

Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle (Burlington, Vt., 2007)

Elaine Leong, “Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowl- edge in the Early Modern English Household,” Centaurus 55, no .2 (2013)