Call Number:

Ms. Codex 2226

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

1 volume(s)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

English recipe and commonplace book, 1848-1855, Ms. Codex 2226, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1848-1855 (inclusive)

Form:

Commonplace books and Codices (bound manuscripts)

Abstract:

This volume was created in England between 1848 and 1855 by an unidentified creator and contains 139 medicinal and household recipes in addition to commonplace entries that include prose, scientific facts and findings, and current events.

The creator of this volume is unknown.

Anderson's pills, a recipe for which is included in this volume, were a remedy first marketed by Patrick Anderson around 1635 in Scotland. They contained aloes, colocynth, and gamboge and were meant to cleanse the system after over-indulgence, presumably of alcohol.

Throughout the volume, the creator demonstrates an interest in advancements and discoveries in chemical reactions, including those that occur in photography and those that result in death.

The chemical process of chromatype photography is detailed in this volume. It was patented by English photographer John Jabez Mayall in 1852, and the process was published in the Photographic Journal in 1853.

The creator writes about both a death from the inhalation of chloroform and James Young Simpson's experiments with chloroform. Chloroform is a chemical substance first developed in 1831 and its first recorded use as an anesthetic was performed by Simpson on himself in 1847. The first recorded death associated with chloroform was that of Hannah Greener on January 28, 1848, and the death recorded in this volume is that of Mrs. Harrop in Sheffield, England in 1854.

The creator also included entries for Victorian events and entertainments including magic lanterns, mesmerism, and the solar eclipse of 1851. They were developed in the early 1800s and appear in advertisements dating from 1824.

Magic lanterns were Victorian-era image projectors popular with middle- and upper-class people in England. They remained popular until the late 19th century when they started to fall out of favor with the rise of stereoscopes and, later, film.

The creator includes a passage from Sir Richard Francis Burton's writings on mesmerism. Burton was a British explorer, writer, and military officer known for translating and publishing Arabian Nights. Mesmerism was the precursor to hypnotism developed by Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer in the mid-18th century.

The solar eclipse of July 28, 1851, resulted in the first scientifically useful photograph of an eclipse, taken by Julius Berkowski in Prussia. The creator describes the eclipse's path through England and Ireland and describes a theory on how those born during the eclipse will be negatively affected.

Sources:

"Anderson's Pills / Scotch Pills." The Cullen Project, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, www.cullenproject.ac.uk/items/i63/. Accessed 5 June 2024.

"Magic Lantern (17th Century - 1940s)." Museum of Obsolete Media, 7 Feb. 2021, obsoletemedia.org/magic-lantern/.

Ré, Pedro. "History of Astrophotography Timeline." Astrosurf, www.astrosurf.com/re/history_astrophotography_timeline.pdf. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Solly, Meilan. "Before There Was Streaming, the Victorians Had 'Magic Lanterns.'" Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution, 14 Sept. 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/victorian-magic-lanterns-were-19th-century-version-netflix-180970286/.

Wawersik, J. "Die Geschichte der Chloroformnarkose" [History of chloroform anesthesia]. Anaesthesiologie und Reanimation vol. 22,6 (1997): 144-52. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9487785/.

"Periscopic Review." Association Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 66, 1854, pp. 315–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25495461. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

This volume was created in England between 1848 and 1855 by an unidentified creator and contains 139 medicinal and household recipes in addition to commonplace entries that include poems, prose, scientific facts, and current events.

The creator supplied pagination for this volume but appears to have skipped pages 51 through 59. It does not seem as if any pages are missing or were removed from this volume and no text is noticeably missing.

The entries in this volume range from standard, practical, household and medicinal recipes to novel entertainments, general curiosities, and the macabre. Many of these more unique entries have to do with chemical reactions, such as those that occur in photography or those that result in death.

Examples of the recipes in this volume include James Pycroft's recipe for French polish (p. 1), never failing cure for a Rheumatism (p. 2), J. White for the scurvy (p. 3), Barclay's antibilious pills (p. 7), Anderson's pills (p. 8), to silver glass (p. 10), hair dye (p. 12), to make good red sealing wax (p. 15), gunpowder (p. 17), Robert Wilson to make waterproof cloth (p. 18), to remove grease for books (p. 19), to make blue fire (p. 26), to paint the glasses of magic lanterns (p. 27), casting nativities (p. 33), treacle beer (p. 39), to clean oil paintings (p. 45), flooring for stables (p. 61), and chronic asthma (p. 65).

There are numerous recipes for toothpaste and oral health concerns (p. 12, 13, 15, 34, 50), such as D. Wells remedy for bad breath (p. 19).

Commonplace entries include "total eclipse of the sun 28th July" [1851] (p. 11), death from inhalation of chloroform and James Young Simpson's use of chloroform (p. 21), "shocking death at Sheffield March 15" [death of James Heywood, chemistry teacher at Wesley College] (p. 22), chromatype photography (p. 62), Burton on mesmerism (p. 69), and marks in the human skin made by Indian ink (p. 70).