Category:
Seventeenth Century

Puppidog Water for the face

In her 1690 pamphlet Mundus Muliebris, Mary Evelyn included a recipe for a woman's facial lotion. She called it "Puppidog Water for the Face":

Take a Fat Pig, or a Fat Puppidog, of nine days old, and kill it, order it as to Roast; save the Blood, and fling away nothing but the Guts; then take the Blood, and Pig, or the Puppidog, and break the Legs and Head, with all the Liver and the rest of the Inwards . . . to that, take two Quarts of old Canary, a pound of unwash’d Butter not salted; a Quart of snails-Shells, and also two Lemmons . . . Still all these together in a Rose Water Still . . . Let it drop slowly into a Glass-Bottle, in which let there be a lump of Loaf-Sugar, and a little Leaf-Gold.

The recipe was intended to be satirical, but Fenja Gunn, in her 1973 book The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics, notes that it was satire rooted in contemporary realities — notably the persistent rumor that Elizabeth I's pomade was made from puppy dog fat, and the seventeenth-century belief that drinking puppy dog urine was good for the complexion.

Some more info about puppy dogs used as moisturizers can be found on the Early Modern Medicine blog:

The medicinal use of puppies, known for their moisturising quality, is detailed in French physician Ambroise Paré's The Method of Curing Wounds by Gun-Shot (1617), which included a recipe for a healing balm that requires boiling two young whelps. The same recipe can be found in Nicholas Culpeper's Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1653). To make 'Oleum Catellorum or Oil of Whelps,

Takes Sallet Oil four pound, two Puppy-dogs newly whelped, Earthworms washed in white Wine one pound; boil the Whelps til they fall in pieces then put in the worms a while after strain it, then with three ounces of Cypress Turpentine, and one ounce of Spirits of Wine, perfect the Oil according to Art.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 05, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Dogs, Seventeenth Century

Haarlem Oil

Their home page.

The Wikipedia page.



A 300-year-old "remedy," whose ingredients are:



Ad from 1920.


Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 02, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Seventeenth Century

The Wicked Bible

An edition of the Bible printed in 1631 came to be known as the 'Wicked Bible' because it omitted one, important word — the word 'not' from the seventh commandment. This made the commandment read, 'Thou shalt commit adultery'. More details from The Guardian:

One thousand copies of the text, which also came to be known as the Adulterous or Sinners’ Bible, were printed, with the printing error only discovered a year later. When it was uncovered, the printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were summoned by order of Charles I to court, and found guilty. They were also fined £300, and their printing licence removed, with the entire print run of the offending text called in, and the majority destroyed.


There's still debate about whether the omission was accidental, purposeful, or sabotage.

Only ten copies of the Wicked Bible are known to exist today. The current going price for one is around $100,000.

More info: wikipedia

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 13, 2021 - Comments (10)
Category: Religion, Books, Seventeenth Century

The Angel of Hadley

image

I had long been aware of the WWI legend of The Angel of Mons, in which a piece of deliberate fiction was accepted as literal truth.

But I was unaware until recently that right in my own backyard, in nearby Hadley, Massachusetts, a similar bit of fiction-as-history existed, the Angel of Hadley, the account of how a mysterious elderly warrior saved settlers from the Indians.

Another good piece on the subject here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 29, 2014 - Comments (1)
Category: Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators, Myths and Fairytales, Historical Figure, Europe, North America, Nineteenth Century, Seventeenth Century, Native Americans

The Coldest Case

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It appears that the 126 year old cold case of Jack the Ripper has been solved by DNA testing. A shawl that was alleged to have been found next to Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, carries mitochondrial DNA profiles from both Eddowes' line and the familial line of one of the Ripper suspects. Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, who subsequently spent his later years in mental asylums, lived in the area of the killings, and was a suspect, left his DNA behind on a bloody shawl. That shawl turned out to be a time capsule for justice.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Sep 19, 2014 - Comments (9)
Category: Crime, Death, Evil, Science, Historical Figure, Seventeenth Century, Blood

Pigeon Blood Visine

Back in the 17th century, if you suffered from a burst blood vessel in your eye, the medical treatment of the day called for squirting pigeon blood in your eye. This was to be repeated 5 or 6 times. The treatment is recorded in a number of medical manuscripts, such as this anonymously authored one from 1663 preserved in the Wellcome Collection. [via The Recipes Project]

For a stroke or pricke in the eye if it causeth payne:
Take a pidgeon and let him blood in one of the winges in the vein & let the blood spinne out of the veine into the eye & it will helpe you yf you use it 5 or 6 tymes.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 26, 2014 - Comments (4)
Category: Medicine, Seventeenth Century

Floram Marchand

image
As magic tricks go, the "I can vomit wine" claim has died a deserved death. One imagines that neither David Copperfield, nor even Penn & Teller, will be reviving the spectacle of Floram Marchand any time soon.

Floram Marchand: The Great Water Spouter

In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought
over from Tours to London, who professed to be able to 'turn water into
wine, and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength
and smell of several wines, and several waters.' Here - the trick and
its cause being utterly unknown - he seems for a time to have gulled
and astonished the public to no small extent, and to his great profit.
Before, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by two friends of
Marchand, who had probably not received the share of the profits to
which they thought themselves entitled. Their somewhat circumstantial
account runs as follows.



More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 07, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category: Entertainment, Frauds, Cons and Scams, Magic and Illusions and Sleight of Hand, Body Fluids, Europe, Seventeenth Century, Alcohol





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Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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