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Illnesses > Information > Topical Cures
Understanding 17th-Century Topical Cures
What is Salve - Oyntment - Plaister?
Smooth oily substances - salves and oyntments were rubbed on the skin, while plaisters were sticky adhesives placed on a wound. Each of Dyke's treatments aided in healing by direct application to external part of the body by 'oynting' or anointing to soothe pain and inflammation or draw out infection from the body.
Also known as an unguent (Latin) or an ointment (Old French). Salve is derived from Old English (sealf) and Old High German (salba). Made as a topical treatment using naturally occurring resins harvested from coniferous trees (pine & fir) or deciduous trees (poplar & birch), mascerated, steeped, and aged for desired potency. Oyntments were more viscous and less oily than salves. Used a drawing salve, resins combined with wax, and a variety of herbs, roots and extracts were prepared as an antiseptic to treat festering wounds, and as an analgesic to soothe painful swelling and aches. Elizabeth Dyke's 'proved' recipes often used salves to draw fluids to the surface on closed wounds through sweating, and infections (exudates - pustules & blood) or foreign objects (splinters, stingers, thorns) out of skin on open wounds, scabs or lesions. Salves and oyntments formed a topical barrier, but plaisters provided a semi-permeable medical dressing against the external (bacterial) environment during healing.
Elizabeth Dyke’s Enthnomedical Approach
As a traditional healer Elizabeth Dyke used what would be termed today as an enthomedical approach by conducting “field research” in her environs among the sick and ailing servants, neighbors, and family members in East Sussex, England in the second half of the seventeenth century. Using practices seen in her “Booke of Recaits” today’s enthnomedical healers, like Dyke, depend on interviews about disease prevalence, evaluation of the natural product and its effect on a selected disease, observation of patient responses, and case discussions with the local practitioners.
