The Medicine Now
Downtown, Riverside. Just a few miles away from the University, and directly across the street from Riverside’s historic Mission Inn, sits the 21st century metaphysical store Dragonmarsh: your one-stop shop for any herbs, spices, incenses, essences, flower oils, and other spiritual supplies. I spoke to an employee named Alex about my project. I showed him my transcription and research, and together, we researched the nearest approximants to the ingredients on the plague page.
Although Alex didn’t feel comfortable appearing on camera, he did offer a few words of advice. He was the first to point out that of course, Dragonmarsh’s ingredients aren’t prepared or packaged medievally, and that it might not be possible to know the specific species of plants mentioned in the recipe, unless we knew more about the date and region of the original manuscript. Even then, of course, language and medicine change over time. I assured him that my project this wasn’t an attempt to be wholly “authentic,” but rather, to consider if, and how, any of these herbal medical beliefs have carried through to the present day, and also how we might make medieval medical studies more interesting to everyday people. Alex recommended a number of books on both subjects, and I left the store with his support and excitement, plus $12 worth of plague page ingredients.
Back at home, I prepared my mise en place. Rue? Check. Marigolds? Check. A feather? Alex insisted that heather would make more sense, but my transcription just didn’t look like an H. Burnett? Check. Sorell? Check? And a quantity of dragons—the crop. Alex offered this to me in two forms, “crunchy” or “powdered,” but I decided that the larger “crunchy” pieces would be more in line with the recipe.
And I was off! In the above video, PhD student Kathy Hardman reads the plague page in a form of English approximately appropriate for the time period of the Plague Page, while I explain and enact my present-day creation of the medicine.
Click the transcription tab for several versions of the recipe.