By Alexandra Kennedy For a postgraduate project on material texts, I spent several chilly autumn weeks bundled in a scarf and coat in the Bodleian Library’s Special Collections, pouring over a small, leather-bound manuscript of medical receipts by Mary Napier (née Vyner)—a seventeenth-century English doctor’s wife. After an initial period of transcription, I felt compelled to understand Mary’s lived experience as best I could. How could the materiality of Mary’s manuscript—in conjunction with its contents—provide clues about her life, and, more specifically, her medical … Continue reading Mary Napier’s “Snaile Milke”: Transmission, Materiality, and Medical Practice
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