Sunday, September 2, 2018

Harvesting & "the lothsome stench of the armepits" 1605

Able Grimmer (Flemish artist, c.1570–c.1619) Four Seasons - Summer - Haymaking

Dealing with the Underarm in Summer 1605

"We will here discouer and discourse of the lothsome stench of the armepits... and how nearer that the stench is to the nose, so much the lothsomer is it. This stench is augmented through great labour at hot times, through want of shifting and alteration of clothes, through great incontinencie, and through some corrupted humors of the body. Then for to remedie this stench, it is needful (according to the quality of the person) that all such are to be purged and let bloud, and that they afterwards do bath in these odoriferous herbes, as Mints, Melilot, Lauander, Ireos, and such like... Marmalade with spices doth also expel all stench."

      Christoph Wirsung, The General Practise of Physicke 1605

Thanks to Elizabeth B. Archibald's "Ask The Past"