Neophilologus (2012) 96:467-485

DOI 10.1007/s11061-011-9248-2

Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval

Medical Texts

R. A. Buck

Published online: 20 March 2011

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Women’s early history provides a long tradition of attested textual

evidence associating female bodily secretions with impurity, particularly in relation
to menstruation, childbirth, and sexual intercourse. But we notice among early
medical texts the mention of another female secretion, woman’s milk, and its use as
a healing ingredient in medical recipes. This paper argues that textual sources of
woman’s milk as a female secretion in this early tradition demonstrate a complex
mixture of sometimes conflicting values, not all of which were unpleasant, nor
irrational. The paper first describes how woman’s milk as a healing ingredient is
presented in Anglo-Saxon medical texts and compares that presentation to the
description and treatment of woman’s milk in a sampling of later English medieval
medical texts. The texts themselves are rich in their demonstration of the use of
women’s bodies for the preparation of medicinal products, and for this reason, the
descriptive aspects of this paper are meant to offer one aspect of women’s history
that is still widely unknown.

Keywords Charms · Medieval medicine · Anglo-Saxon · Woman’s milk ·

Women’s studies · Medical recipes

Introduction: The Manuscripts

Bald’s Leechbook is the name given to Books I and II of a tenth-century Anglo-

Saxon manuscript now located in London (BL, Royal 12. D. xvii). The complete
manuscript, written in England in Old English, is a collection of practical medical
recipes and remedies and has come to be called a Leechbook, although no formal

R. A. Buck (&)
English Department, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Avenue,
Charleston, IL 61920-3099, USA
e-mail: rabuck@eiu.edu

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title appears on the manuscript (Ker 1957, p. 333). Leech is an archaic word
meaning “physician” and in Old English lǣ ce has the same sense, although meaning
more specifically “medical healer”.1–2 Bald is the name of the Anglo-Saxon owner
of Books I and II of the manuscript; a colophon with this information appears at the
end of Book II. However, we do not know who Bald was, nor do we have any
reference to a person named Bald in Anglo-Saxon texts dating to the same period of
the manuscript (Cameron 1993, pp. 30–31).
Book III, the third book of the Royal manuscript, is referred to as Leechbook III.
It covers a variety of subjects, is not as well organized as Books I and II, repeats
similar recipes to Books I and II, and is thus assumed to be separate from Bald’s
Leechbook, although contained within the same manuscript (Wright 1955, pp. 14–
15; Cameron 1993, p. 42; Meaney 1984, p. 237) and written by the same scribe
(Adams and Deegan 1992, p. 88). The three books of the manuscript, as a group
referred to in this paper as the Anglo-Saxon Leechbooks, were written around A.D.
950 and are the oldest surviving collection of medical recipes from the Anglo-Saxon
period written in Old English (Cameron, p. 30).
Lacnunga, the name of a second Anglo-Saxon manuscript now located in London
(BL, Harley 585) dates a bit later than the Leechbooks, probably the end of the tenth
century to A.D. 1000 (Wright, p. 11). Lacnunga, like the Leechbooks, is a collection
of around 120 medical recipes (lācnung in Old English means “a healing, cure,
medicament or remedy”). It lacks any organizational design or master plan for the
entire text, and it contains a larger portion of remedies showing influence from
Celtic and Germanic sources than the Leechbooks.
The two manuscripts establish themselves within a long tradition of medical
books from the Greco-Roman tradition, some of which were translated, others of
which were at least known to the Anglo-Saxons (Cockayne 1865, II, Preface, pp.
xxvi, xxix; Voigts 1979; Wright 1955, p. 15). The Leechbooks and Lacnunga show
extensive borrowing from early Mediterranean sources, but do not demonstrate a
direct translation, unlike other medical texts of the period; they rather show
borrowed material combined with or modified by native elements (Cameron 1993,
p. 42; Voigts 1979). As Voigts (1979) argues, there is much documentary evidence
within the manuscripts that points to heavy use of the books for practical purposes
during the Anglo-Saxon period: she notes changes made to the texts that show
accommodation of the classical texts to current medical practice in England, rather
than just “mindless copying” of source texts (p. 266). Thus the Leechbooks do not
provide evidence of uniquely Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward illness or medicine;

1
Recorded names of practicing physicians or leeches during the Anglo-Saxon period mentioned by Bede
and other writers of the time number only around seven. A few royal and ecclesiastical establishments
cared for their own sick and infirm in designated areas of their estates, and certain monasteries had
infirmaries notably for their sick and elderly members (Orme 1995, pp. 17–19), but other people in
society had to manage as best they could with healing themselves and their families. So even though a
professional class of healers begins to emerge toward the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, the period is
particularly characterized by all different types of people, leeches, performing the role of healer
(Kieckhefer 1989, p. 56).
2
All dictionary sources for the lexical studies in this paper for Old English are from Bosworth-Toller,
Hall and Meritt, and Roberts and Kay.

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 469

however, they can be used to illustrate the knowledge that the Anglo-Saxons
processed, transcribed, and considered using in their medical treatments.3
There are a number of linguistic clues throughout the Anglo-Saxon Leechbooks
that identify men, rather than women, as the writers and compilers of the medical
treatises (Buck 2000, pp. 41–45). This is, of course, expected; public written
discourse before the eleventh century was restricted to those with authority who
could read and write and maintain and preserve written documents. As Weston
(1995) argues, these collections encode “a male textual tradition,” evident in the
combined voices of one or more male authors with other learned medical voices of
authority that are referred to throughout the texts (p. 280). This textual evidence,
though, does not underestimate the involvement of women in the oral development
of healing remedies and practices, a tradition that persisted alongside the learned
medical culture for centuries. Even though a professional class of healers begins to
emerge toward the end of the early medieval period, the Anglo-Saxon period is
characterized by all different types of people performing the role of healer: monks,
priests, and professional healers worked alongside surgeons, lay healers, midwives,
and domestic healers, many of whom were ordinary men and women with no formal
medical training (Kieckhefer 1989, p. 59). Women had much of the responsibility of
the long and short-term care of the sick in their daily domestic lives. The
information contained within the Leechbooks would have been of interest to all
these groups of people; distribution of medical lore probably took place among them
(Kieckhefer 1989, p. 56). The degree to which women’s ideas and healing initiatives
informed the literate medical culture and consequently these texts is difficult to
substantiate textually in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Anglo-Saxon Translations

Woman’s milk appears as an ingredient in only a few medical recipes in the Royal
manuscript. All the references appear in recipes for the treatment of either the eyes
or the ears. One recipe containing woman’s milk appears in Lacnunga for the
treatment of fever.
The Anglo-Saxon Leechbooks were first published in Anglo-Saxon font and
translated into Modern English (nineteenth-century English) in 1865 by Thomas
Oswald Cockayne in Volume II of a three-volume work he produced on Anglo-
Saxon medical texts as part of the Master of the Rolls series (Chronicles and

3
The Old English Herbarium, a translation of a collection of herbal recipes gathered from Greek sources,
is attributed to pseudo-Apuleius (second century A.D.), and survives in four manuscripts dating around
1050. A translation of Medicina de Quadrupedibus of Sextus Placitus, a collection of medical recipes
using animal ingredients, follows the Herbarium. Woman’s milk is not mentioned as an ingredient in
these two collections and so they will not be discussed in this paper. See De Vriend’s edition (1984) for a
detailed description and edition of the manuscripts and Van Arsdall’s (2002) new translation. Another
manuscript (London, BL, Harley 6258B) contains Peri Didaxeum (“Concerning Schools of Medicine”)
and dates as late as 1200. It contains sections that are likely based on the same source text as Bald’s
Leechbook (Meaney; Hollis 205). Cockayne (1865) provides a translation of the text in Vol. III. There are
two references to woman’s milk, both for the treatment of the eyes (p. 97). Since they are similar to the
references in the Leechbooks, I do not repeat them in the text of this paper.

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Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published by the
Majesty’s treasury). Cockayne, in Volume III of the same series, translated the
Anglo-Saxon medical text, Lacnunga. The following Modern English (nineteenth-
century) translations are from this three-volume series by Cockayne. B refers to
Bald’s Leechbook (Vol II); LE refers to Leechbook III (Vol II); and LA refers to
Lacnunga (Vol III).
Of the medical texts considered here, the Lacnunga has been the most translated.
J. H. G. Grattan and Charles Singer worked extensively with Cockayne’s translation
and in 1952 published Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine, an edited text and revised
translation of Lacnunga.4 I provide that translation here as well, indicated as GLA,
along with Edward Pettit’s most recent translation of the Lacnunga, published in
2001 in two volumes, indicated as EP.

Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon Medical Texts

The number following each citation of a medical recipe in this paper is the page
number on which the recipe appears in the translated text. Please note that
throughout his translations, Cockayne does not use the apostrophe to indicate
possessive case, so, for instance, phrases such as “woman’s milk” will appear as
“womans milk” in Cockayne’s translation. Italicized words in Cockayne, which
indicate his insertion or substitution of words or phrases in his translation, are not
italicized in my paper. Throughout this paper, parenthetical comments within the
quotations are the editors’; bracketed insertions within the quotations are mine.
Bracketed insertions marked “f.” refer to information provided in the editors’
footnotes.5

For Treatment of Eyes

1.1 For mist of eyes, take of celandines juice a spoon full, another of fennels, a
third of southernwoods juice, and two spoon measures of the tear of honey
(virgin honey that drops without pressure), mingle them together, and then
with a feather put some into the eyes in the morning and when it be midday,

4
The second translation of Lacnunga was produced by Grattan and Singer in (1952) (reprinted 1971).
For more details about the manuscript, see pages 206–210 of that edition.
5
The following explains a few items of translation in recipes 1.1–1.8.
1.1. Mist of eyes, eagna miste, is explained by Deegan as “any condition which causes impairment of the
eyesight,” probably due to cataracts or infection (p. 226).
Southernwood, aprotane, is a variety of wormwood.
1.3. Swails appel, swegles æppel, has an uncertain identification. Cockayne identifies it as “the leaves of
the malobathrum (II, p. 407). Deegan questions whether this is the beetle nut (p. 439); I assume Deegan
means betel nut, the leaves of the betel palm grown in Southeast Asia, but this seems as though it would
be difficult to obtain in England.
Olusatrum, attrum, by Deegan identified as copperas-water (p. 231), which is ferrous sulfate.
1.4. Hot culvers blood, hat culfran blod, is the blood of a pigeon.
1.6. Earwark, ear wærce, is ear pain or ear ache.
1.7. Palsy, lyft adle or literally “left disease,” refers to paralysis probably as a result of a stroke.

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and again at evening after that, when it is dried up and spent; for sharpness of
the salve, take milk of a woman who hath a child, apply it to the eyes. (B, 29)
1.2 Again, lay upon the eyes green coriander rubbed fine and mixed with womans
milk. (B, 29)
1.3 Against a white spot in the eye; rub to dust burnt salt, and swails apple, and
olusatrum, of all equal quantities, rub to dust, and put on the eyes, wash lightly
with spring water, smear afterwards with womans milk. (LE, 309)
1.4 If red sponges wax on the eyes, drop on them hot culvers blood, or swallows,
or womans milk, till the sponges be got rid of. (LE, 309)

For Treatment of Ears

1.5 For the same [deafness of ears], mix with woman’s milk juice of green
coriander, and a drop of honey and of wine, warmed together. (B, 43)
1.6 Again [against earward], warm juice of coriander (celandine rather?) and
womans milk in a shell, and drop them into the ears. (LE, 311)
1.7 For palsy, if the mouth be awry or livid, rub coriander in woman’s milk, put it
into the sound ear, it will soon be well with the man. Again, take coriander,
dry it, work it to dust, mingle the dust with milk of a woman, who brought
forth a male, wring through a purple cloth, and smear the sound cheek
therewith, and drip it on the ear warily. (LE, 339)

For Treatment of Other Illnesses

1.8 Against fever, take a snail, and purify him, and take the clean foam, mingle it
with womans milk, give it the man to eat; it will be well with him. (LA, 71)
For fever: take a snail (or slug) and clean it and take the clean foam; mix with
woman’s milk; give to eat; he will soon be better. (EP, I, 117)
For the treatment of the eyes and the ears, woman’s milk is applied to the body in
the form of a salve or drops, mixed with select herbs and plants, and occasionally
with honey, wine, salt, or the blood of birds. In the case of fever, woman’s milk is
mixed with animal ingredients and administered as food and ingested. Woman’s
milk in most cases is unspecified in relation to the gender of the child the woman
has borne; in one case (1.7 above) it is gendered, requiring specifically milk from a
woman who has borne a male child. In addition, the same recipe (1.7) indicates that
the milk should be wrung through a specifically-colored cloth. Cockayne translates
the color as “purple”, although C. P. Biggam (2006) argues that Old English hǣwen
refers rather to the color “blue” and that the blue dye used from the woad plant had
certain medicinal properties (pp. 5–6).
The use of woman’s milk as an ingredient in medical recipes is certainly
not a uniquely Anglo-Saxon phenomenon but rather has much earlier medical

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cross-cultural origins.6 In a Greek collection of herbal medical recipes attributed to

Dioscorides of Anazarba in Cilicia (ca. 40–90 A.D.), a discussion of woman’s milk ensues
in Book II, Living Creatures (Gunther’s 1959 edition of Goodyer’s 1652 translation):
1.9 All milke commonly is of good juice, nourishing, mollifying the belly, causing
the stomach and bowels to be pufft vp with inflation. (109)
2.0 But woman’s milke is ye sweetest and most nourishing. Being sucked it is
good for the gnawing of ye stomach and the Consumption. It is good also for
one that hath dranck downe a Sea-Hare. Being mixed with Franckincense
beaten small, it is dropt into eyes that are bloudshot by a blow. And it is good
for the goutie being anointed on with Meconium and Ceratium. But all milke
is naught for ye spleneticall, the Hepaticall, for ye Vertiginous, Epileptical,
and such as are troubled in their sinewes, for such as haue feauers, or whose
heads doe ake, unless at any tume one give them whey for purgation sake, as
hath been formerly showed. (110)
In Dioscorides’ text, woman’s milk is suggested as an ointment for the eyes and as
an ointment to be applied to the body when mixed with other ingredients. It is also
recommended here for adults to drink in case of stomach upset not associated with
more serious illness (including fever) unless it is used for purgative purposes.
Greek medical texts in turn were influenced by even earlier Assyrian, Babylonian,
and Egyptian sources (Dawson 1934, p. 12). The use of woman’s milk as an ingredient
in medical recipes is mentioned a number of times in various Egyptian medical texts
(Dawson 1934, p. 14; Sigerist 1951, p. 337); milk of a woman who has borne
specifically a male child is also mentioned (Dawson 1932, p. 12). The formulaic
structure of the medical recipe as text-type, in addition, can be traced to
Mesopotamian medical texts (Magner 1992, p. 18) and Egyptian medical recipes,
specifically the Ebers and Hearst Papyri (Clendening 1942, pp. 1–5): first, a heading
specifying the ailment to be cured is given; then, ingredients and quantities; directions
for preparing the recipe; sometimes followed by directions on how to apply or
administer the medicine; the time of day and how often to administer the treatment
(Dawson 1934, pp. 12–13; Sigerist 1951, pp. 337–339). Egyptian medical texts
contain headings which begin “Another remedy” or “Another” or “Again” or
“Another for the same” or “Here begins the recipes” for treating X disease, as we find
in the Anglo-Saxon texts. Formulaic endings validating the authenticity of the recipe
appear in Egyptian texts: “excellent and true, proved a million times”; this shows
some similarity to Anglo-Saxon texts: “a good remedy”; “it will be well with him”;
“an excellent remedy;” “and he shall be whole” (Dawson 1934, pp. 13–14). The
formulaic structure of medical recipes, then, in addition to the use of woman’s milk as
ingredient, belongs to a much larger medical tradition that predates significantly the
production of the Anglo-Saxon texts.7

6
The use of woman’s milk as described in this paper exists, even today, across a variety of cultures,
particularly in Eastern countries. However, the religious, medical, and gendered traditions from which
these attested examples have emerged open up a scope too large for the contextualized interest of
woman’s milk in this paper.
7
For more on the medical recipe as text type, see Carroll (1999).

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 473

Scholarship in the history of medicine often restricts discussion of medical texts

to rational accounts of the use and effectiveness of medical ingredients. Cameron,
for instance, takes this approach. As a result, we find little to no mention of
woman’s milk in these discussions. However, since the classical medical tradition
during the Anglo-Saxon period and earlier was closely intertwined with popular
healing traditions, it seems important that we as well place these medical texts
within these larger contexts in order to at least question why this particular
ingredient appears and why it continues to sustain itself throughout medical texts of
the later middle ages.
Woman’s milk used in the context of breastfeeding the young is not the interest
of this paper. There is much scholarship available on medieval attitudes towards
female sexuality and female anatomy and views of woman’s milk in the context of
nursing infants. My interest is rather in exploring the use of woman’s milk outside
this expected context: how and why it crosses over from one context to another, as a
product used for other purposes besides that of feeding the young, applied or mixed
with other ingredients on the body (male or female), or ingested by adults rather
than by children. In short, milk is always a gendered product simply because it is
produced only by females, but in what contexts is woman’s milk viewed as a
commodity, regardless of its connection to gender?

Milk in Anglo-Saxon Medical Texts

The Anglo-Saxon texts do not explain why woman’s milk is selected as an

ingredient in certain recipes rather than in others or how woman’s milk as ingredient
is viewed in relation to other types of milk available. Nothing is made explicit in the
texts: each recipe is performed according to its own specified combination of
ingredients and no attempt is made in the production of the manuscripts to relate one
recipe to another. Multiple variations of recipes are available for each illness, and
each is expected to be performed on its own individual merits.
Throughout the texts, when milk is listed as an ingredient, the type of milk is
unspecified in the majority of cases. In a few recipes, besides woman’s milk, cow’s
milk, ewe’s milk, goat’s milk, or hind’s milk (milk of a female deer) is indicated. In
the treatment of eyes and ears, milk unspecified by type appears in a number of
recipes alongside others which specify cow’s milk, hind’s milk, or woman’s milk. In
these cases, woman’s milk is seen as simply another type of milk, as if assuming
that whatever type of milk is at hand or convenient will do for the treatment of the
eyes and the ears. So, on the one hand, woman’s milk is linked in a classification
scheme with other animal milks. The above example from Dioscorides’ herbal (as
an example of foundational medical knowledge from the classical Greek medical
tradition) lists milk after a discussion of the house-mouse, and is followed by whey,
junket, then woman’s milk, then new cheese and horse-cheese. Woman’s milk is not
included in the same entry as milk (it has its own separate and distinct discussion),
but it is classified in the same section as other milks and cheese (Gunther 1959, pp.
108–111). The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–79) in his Natural History
remarks that woman’s milk “is the sweetest and most delicate of all…, especially

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the milk of a woman who has already weaned her baby” and especially if the baby is
a boy, and most especially if the woman gives birth to boy twins; then, the milk is
“most efficacious” (1963, VIII, p. 53). In terms of its classification, Pliny claims that
woman’s milk is “beneficial” to everyone and that it is “more nourishing than any
other kind, the next being that of the goat” (1963, VIII, 87).
On the other hand, as indicated, woman’s milk occurs infrequently throughout
the Anglo-Saxon texts while milk unspecified by type appears more frequently, and
for treatment of a variety of other ailments: to eliminate a dead fetus, for instance
(LE, 331); to assist lactation (LA, 191); to treat a bloody nose (B, 55), pain in the
chest (B, 61), diarrhea (LE, 321), or stomach ache (LE, 357), among many other
ailments. Milk is used in these cases as a sick dish remedy, where herbs, seeds,
plants, or bark are generally boiled in the milk and administered to the patient as a
drink, but sometimes milk is mixed with meal and ingested as food. Occasionally, a
remedy requires bathing in milk (B, 57). Milk is primarily viewed as a food
providing nourishment, although having the advantage of being easy to drink.8 With
the exception of the medical recipe for fever in Lacnunga already mentioned,
woman’s milk is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon texts in these sick dish recipes.
So for this larger range of other illnesses, woman’s milk is not viewed as
interchangeable with any other type of milk, and is viewed rather in opposition to it.
The texts themselves, then, show inconsistency in this regard.
In the sampling following of medical recipe collections dating after the Anglo-
Saxon period, woman’s milk is also equated with animal life. In a number of cases
no substitute ingredients are given for woman’s milk, but in others, woman’s milk
may be simply replaced by ass’s milk or cow’s milk or goat’s milk.

Medieval Medical Views about the Body

The Anglo-Saxon medical tradition, and medical practice throughout even the later
Middle Ages, was largely influenced by the theory of the four humors in Greek
medical practice, developed first in the Hippocratic Corpus, roughly between 430
and 330 B.C. and later in medical treatises by Galen of Pergamon (c. A.D. 129–
200). The Hippocratic writings consist of a large body of work written by different
people over an extended period of time, the theories of which were varied and
complex (Jouanna 1999, p. 316; Lloyd 1978, pp. 9–10). The texts of value to the
following simplified discussion are the Hippocratic texts “Regimen in Health,”
“Humours,” “Regimen I,” “Regimen II,” and “Regimen III” (in Hippocrates), and
Galen’s On the Natural Faculties. The theory of the four humors proposed that the
individual body worked in corresponding ways to the universe so that basic
elements and properties of the universe–fire (hot and dry), water (cold and wet),
earth (cold and dry), and air (hot and wet)–were believed to correspond to the four
humors created by the human body–choler or yellow bile, phlegm or mucus,
black bile, and blood. Medical treatment was thus a question of finding ways of
restoring properties and humors to their careful balance within the individual

8
“It is easier to replenish with drink than with food” (Hippocrates 1967, IV, p. 111).

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body–principally through a regimen of herbal medical recipes, sick dishes, diet,

charms, or exercise–, for disease was defined precisely as an imbalance of
proportions in the relations of properties (Grmek and Fantini 1998, pp. 247–248).
The “individual” body is emphasized here, for the Hippocratic and Galenic system
concerned itself with the belief that the balancing act of humoral properties
manifested itself in different ways in each individual (Hippocrates, IV, p. 367).9
This is one explanation of why we find slightly different combinations of
ingredients in a variety of recipes for the same illness in medieval medical texts: if a
specific combination did not work precisely, then even a slight modification of one
or two ingredients might restore the patient to a healthy balance of humors.10
Medical practice required knowledge of a vast system of alimentary products and
properties that was complex in its intricacies. As Rawcliffe (1997) states, healers
had to learn “the relative levels of heat, cold, dryness, and moisture inherent in all
forms of medication, whether internal or external…” in addition to their physical
properties (p. 54).11
Moreover, in the Hippocratic tradition, the diseased body was viewed as
corrupted by bad humors, and recovery meant finding healing remedies that would
evacuate these humors from the body. Pomata (1998) observes that the Hippocratic
texts portray a view of the healthy body as open and connected to the outside world
through its orifices, which act as channels (p. 133). Bodily fluids freely circulated,
connecting the healthy body to the outer world; disease, in contrast, was perceived
as closing the body up, trapping corrupted humors inside and thus sealing off the
self from the world (Pomata, p. 133). Thus healing remedies that could produce
spontaneous or multiple evacuations of corrupted humors were considered the most
effective treatments (Pomata, p. 131).
Even though woman’s milk was perceived as having powers and properties
outside of its material make-up, woman’s milk was also perceived as concrete
material and simply another type of everyday item available in the healing tradition.
In the Anglo-Saxon texts, milk (unspecified by type) was perceived to consist of
certain properties that could counteract and restore to balance an excess of humoral
properties causing eye or ear ailments (and, consequently, unplug orifices perceived
to be blocked by disease), although it is not clear what the exact make-up of these
properties is or what the specific effects of these properties are. Woman’s milk, in

9
“[I]t is impossible to treat of the regimen of men with such a nicety as to make the exercises exactly
proportionate to the amount of food. There are many things to prevent this. First, the constitutions of men
are different; dry constitutions, for instance are more or less dry as compared with themselves or as
compared with one another. Similarly with moist constitutions, or with those of any other kind”
(Hippocrates 1967, IV, p. 367).
10
This does not underestimate, though, that medical recipes were also performances, enacted orally
using whatever ingredients were available on the spot, thereby explaining variations in recipes.
11
“I maintain that he who aspires to treat correctly of human regimen must first acquire knowledge and
discernment of the nature of man in general…. These things therefore the author must know, and further
the power possessed severally by all the foods and drinks of our regimen, both the power each of them
possessed by nature and the power given them by the constraint of human art. For it is necessary to know
both how one ought to lessen the power of these when they are strong by nature, and when they are weak
to add by art strength to them, seizing each opportunity as it occurs” (Hippocrates 1967, IV, p. 227). On
the power of food, see also Hippocrates (1967 IV, p. 307).

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addition, was perceived as consisting of other properties that were not efficacious in
the treatment of a range of other illnesses, since woman’s milk is restricted to a
limited set of ailments. Moreover, aside even from assumptions made by humoral
theory, simply the physical properties of milk (its thickness, fat and oil content,
capacity in animal milks to sour or coagulate) were throughout early history
considered useful in the preparation of specific types of salves and ointments, along
with other fats, oils, and honeywax (Sigerist 1951, pp. 487–488).
Hippocratic, Galenic, Aristotelian, and other Greek medical and philosophical
texts contain much discussion on the workings of the human body in relation to
“generation” of seed or offspring. In this early medical tradition, breast milk and
menstrual blood were believed to be physiologically related: veins supplied
menstrual blood to the fetus during pregnancy for nourishment, and then, after birth,
sent the blood to the breasts where it was transformed into milk to nourish the
child.12 In these texts, blood and subsequently milk, in this context, are viewed as a
life-force, functioning to sustain and nourish life. Woman’s milk, then, becomes
associated with power and strength and nourishment, as does milk in general:
Cheese is strong, heating, nourishing and binding; it is strong because it is
nearest to a creature’s origin; it is nourishing because the fleshy part of the
milk remains in it; it is heating because it is fat; binding, because it is
coagulated by fig juice or rennet. (Hippocrates, IV, p. 325)

Milk and Medieval Popular Culture

The medieval recipes mentioned thus far illustrate uses of milk and woman’s milk
that may be understood to a limited degree by the claims of humoral theory and
medieval medical assumptions about the human body. However, Anglo-Saxon
medical texts are not just a reflection of a scholarly tradition of classical medicine;
they are rather a more complex collage of merged and interlacing classical, liturgical,
popular, and folkloric healing practices. The medical texts include in their recipes a
large number of liturgical references from early Roman Christian and Germanic
traditions but as well reflect folkloric voices, defined by Jolly as “areligious” and
“therefore a more appropriate term than paganism or magic to describe the
12
“For the material which nourishes is the same as that from which Nature forms the animal in
generation. Now this is the sanguineous liquid in the sanguinea, and milk is blood concocted (not
corrupted).” (Aristotle II, p. 319 in Hutchins 1980).
“And þe veynes ben nedeful as vessels of blood to bere and to bringe blood from þe lyuour to fede and
norische þe membres of þe body” (Bartholomaeus Anglicus, citing medical ideas of earlier classical
sources in Seymour, et al. 1975, p. 279). See also Jacquart and Thomas (1988, p. 52).
Finucci (2001) observes the following example in a medical recipe collection of Marsilio Ficino, a
fifteenth-century Venetian practitioner:
Men between sixty-three and seventy years old who felt the burden of aging in their members
could drink the blood of an energetic, healthy, and good-natured youth… [or] could ‘ravenously’
apply their mouths to the breasts of a healthy, happy, temperate, and beautiful maiden and suck….
In Ficino’s Galenic system, blood is not an equal-opportunity resource; when one uses women’s
liquids for regeneration, it is better to drink their milk, which is concocted from blood, than their
blood, given the more rudimentary construction of female physiology…. (pp. 2–3)

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 477

transmission of Germanic practices and beliefs that ultimately lost their pagan
context” (11). Within this synthesized framework, popular culture was less interested
in theory and doctrine than it was in practical action, in finding ways of doing and
performing as an expression of experience and belief (Jolly 1996, p. 23).
So references to milk, then, within the Anglo-Saxon medical texts, extend at
times beyond the rationale of medieval medical theory. As one example, in
Lacnunga a healing childbirth charm for a woman who fears a miscarriage calls for
a series of steps to be followed sequentially, one which involves sipping from her
hand cow’s milk.13 In the recipe, she is instructed not to swallow the milk but rather
to quickly find running water and then spit out the milk into the water14:
The woman who cannot nourish her child [in the womb]: Let her take in her
hand milk of a cow of one colour, and then sip it up with her mouth, and then
go to running water and spew therein the milk, and then lift up with the same
hand a mouthful of the water and swallow it; then let her say these words:
Everywhere have I carried my splendid stomach-sturdy one,
Thereby excellent robust one.
Him will I hold for me, and go home. (GLA, 191)

13
Medieval scholars use the terms “charm” and “medical recipe” to distinguish, respectively (one) text
that reflects popular healing ritual, performance of sequential enactment of steps often not medically
rational and often accompanied by healing words, versus (two) text which reflects healing by producing a
medicinal product or rational enactment of steps. For purposes of clarity, I keep this terminological
distinction in my paper, but I would argue that this distinction should not be made, for in the holistic
medieval view of the medical, material, physical, and spiritual forces interacting with the human body
and the cosmos, steps to take to heal the land are perceived in very much the same way as steps to heal the
body, and words and ritual enactment of specified steps are perceived as simply other types of ingredients
in the remedy. For a thorough discussion on problems in scholarship related to this issue, see Nokes 2002,
Introduction and Chapter One.
14
Cockayne’s translation is as follows:
“Let the woman who cannot rear her child, then take milk of a cow of one colour in her hand, and then
sup it up with her mouth, and then go to running water, and spew out the milk therein, and then ladle up
with the same hand a mouth full of the water, and swallow it down; then let her say these words:
“Everywhere I carried for me the famous kindred doughty one with this famous meat doughty one; so I
will have it for me and go home” “(LA III, 69).
Cockayne uses “rear” as a translation of Old English afedan; afedan means more precisely “to nourish”
or “to bring forth” from the womb in Modern English, although there is much ambiguity among
translations about this text, especially whether the nourishment applies to feeding the child inside or
outside the womb. For a summary and interpretation of discussions and for his outside-the-womb
interpretation, see Pettit 2001 (Vol. 2, pp. 327–331). Cockayne also notes in the margin that the quoted
text is gibberish. Grattan and Singer offer a reading as follows. The woman’s voice states that she has
carried her strong child everywhere with her (in her womb, consistent with the use of afedan in the
preceding charm GLA no. 169b, 189), and she calls again her child “strong” optimistically and hopefully:
meteþihtan is a compound word in Old English meaning literally “food-strong” or well-nourished
(hopefully by the milk in the charm), equated in form to magaþihtan in the first line, literally meaning
“son-strong,” (or ambiguously, “stomach-strong”) which is her desperate wish. Her last line states that she
will hold and keep him and actually preserve him (habban) inside her, again her wish.
The Old English text of the woman’s voice is as follows:
Gehwer fer[e]de ic me þone mæran magaþihtan;
mid þysse mæran meteþihtan.
þone ic me wille habban and ham gan. (GLA, 190)

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478 R. A. Buck

The woman who cannot feed her child: let her take milk of a cow of one
colour in her hand and then sip it with her mouth, and then go to running water
and spit the milk therein, and then scoop up a mouthful of the water with the
same hand and swallow it; then let her say these words:
‘Everywhere I have carried the glorious, strong son.
By means of this glorious, strong food
I will keep him ((?)for myself) and go home’. (EP, I, 115)
In the charm, cow’s milk is associated with food and nourishment and is therefore a
remedy to strengthen the unborn son the woman is carrying, even though she is not
instructed to ingest the milk. The milk, the physical actions, the performance, and
the sequential steps of the ritual all enable the woman to help her remedy her
situation: through symbolic transference, the power of milk is able to fight any
malign forces believed to be responsible for weakening the unborn child. This belief
that power was “resident in material objects” (Jolly 1996, p. 116) is one, though,
that should not be understood as significant only to a folkloric domain. Within
Jolly’s framework, it may be argued that the powers of milk in this particular
context reconcile themselves, rather than stand in opposition, to other healing
traditions within the texts: power inherent in liturgical objects was a consistent early
Christian belief that resonates throughout the medical texts and, as noted, the
healing power of food was one of the primary assumptions of humoral theory.15
However, as Bynum (1987) argues, milk and women’s bodies were often not
inseparable concepts and milk as material object thus cannot be viewed in identical
ways to other medieval objects holding resident power, such as alimentary
products–water, oil, wine–used for liturgical purposes, or honey and yeast used in
the early Anglo-Saxon fertility charm, “For Unfruitful Land.”16 Milk, in other
words, assumed the attribute of healing power precisely because of its connection to
the female body, and conversely, the female body was considered “holy or
miraculous” precisely because it could generate food for survival (Bynum, p. 274):
Medieval people did not simply associate body with woman. They also
associated woman’s body with food. Woman was food because breast milk
was the human being’s first nourishment–the one food essential for survival.
(Bynum, pp. 269–270)
For this reason, images of women even in women’s very early history in antiquity
(in Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, Scandinavia, and the British Isles) were often
yoked to the image of the cow and both were revered and valued in the form of
various fertility and healing rites.17 So in this context of healing, regeneration, and

15
For a discussion of how certain types of magia were incorporated and used to advantage in early
Christian ritual, see Flint (1991, p. 9).
16
This metrical charm is found in London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A, vii. For the text and
manuscript information, see Dobbie (1958, p. cxxx).
17
For a discussion of women and milk in early Egypt, see Lesko (1999, pp. 92, 161, 175); in early
Roman pagan rituals, Staples (1998, pp. 41, 49), and Burriss (1974, pp. 148–149); in Scandinavia and the
British Isles, Davidson (1996, pp. 93, 98–99), and Green (1996a, b, p. 80).

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 479

fertility, it is not surprising to find milk and woman’s milk appearing in the medical
recipes of Anglo-Saxon medical texts.

Later Medieval Recipe Books

A sampling of medieval medical recipe books contained in manuscripts dating

after the Anglo-Saxon period reveal that not only does woman’s milk continue to
persist as an ingredient in the treatment of illness for the eyes and ears; it also
appears as an ingredient in the treatment of an increasing variety of other illnesses.
In other words, instead of diminishing in frequency of mention within medical
texts over time, it is rather included in an increasing number of recipes for the
treatment of other diseases. This, of course, does not mean that the recipes were
conceived and written during the period of the date of each manuscript: the later
medieval medical texts too borrowed from earlier traditions and include
translations of earlier works. However, these recipes were read, studied, and at
least considered in the treatment of diseases during the period of the manuscript
date and their inclusion in these texts raises questions about why the writers or
compilers did not exclude them from the manuscripts, especially in texts that were
not direct translations of earlier works. Since they were included, it is fair to
assume that there was some general belief in the efficacy of woman’s milk as a
healing ingredient at the time of the production of each manuscript. (In the
following discussion, references to specific recipes refer to the page number on
which each appears in the text).
In the Middle English Gilbertus Anglicus (ed. Getz 1991), a fifteenth-century
translation of Compendium Medicinae written in Latin by Gilbertus Anglicus in
1250 (London, Wellcome 537), at least sixteen entries contain woman’s milk as
ingredient for the treatment of eyes and ears. This is particularly noteworthy since,
as Getz remarks, the copyist of the manuscript “systematically edited out most
references to the diseases of women and children” (p. li) but obviously retained
recipes which include woman’s milk, thereby suggesting again that the ingredient
was perceived as efficacious in the treatment of certain illnesses. Woman’s milk is
mentioned for treatment of eyes that ache, are inflamed, are covered by film, or are
suffering from head congestion. Woman’s milk is mixed with a selection of other
ingredients: oil or water of roses and other flowers and plants; the white of an egg;
wine; herbs; snail juice; and child’s urine. Woman’s milk is gendered on 56: for
eyes bothered by head congestion, milk from a woman who has borne specifically a
male child is recommended for use at the end of the treatment. On 38–39, woman’s
milk is suggested to be as efficacious as milk of an ass. In more serious eye injuries
(58), woman’s milk should be avoided and animal blood used instead.
For aching ears or for cleansing the ear or for a cold in the ears, woman’s milk is
one of the ingredients used to make liquid drops along with a selection of other
ingredients: oil of roses and other flowers; the juice of an onion, leek, radish, or
select herbs; the white of an egg, oil, butter, honey, vinegar, or opium in vinegar.
Ingredients are strained through a cloth and dropped into the ear. For deafness of the
ears (75), woman’s milk from a woman who has borne a male child is specified.

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480 R. A. Buck

In addition to the treatment of the eyes and ears, woman’s milk is a recommended
ingredient in Gilbertus Anglicus’ collection for the treatment of chest cough (112).
An ointment to rub on the chest is made of selected ingredients, among them oil of
violet, select herbs, leaves of water lily, the white of an egg, butter, oil, wax, and
woman’s milk. To treat a person who is suffering from too much phlegm as a result of
head congestion, an enema to purge the rectum is recommended which should consist
of honey and warm woman’s milk (213–214). Woman’s milk is also used in the
treatment of madness or insanity (12). A warm plaster to place on the head includes
such ingredients as black poppy, opium, henbane, and milk from a woman who has
borne specifically, in this treatment, a female child.18
In a medical collection of manuscripts written in Middle English in the fourteenth
century (ed. Henslow 1899), a few entries for the treatment of eye illnesses are
included. Both recommend drops for the eyes consisting of select ingredients mixed
with woman’s milk, and both specify the milk of a woman who has borne a male
child. The majority of entries in the collection, however, which include woman’s
milk as ingredient, treat other illnesses. For treatment of a festering sore or ulcer, for
example, the froth which appears at the top of fermenting ale or beer is mixed with
woman’s milk and applied to the sore (32).19 For another type of sore (103), flour
dough is mixed with the milk of a woman who has borne a male child and this
plaster is applied to the sore. In several entries, woman’s milk is used to treat
wounds. On 48, milk from a woman who has borne a male child is mixed and boiled
with wax, mastic, and frankincense and applied to the wound. On 51, after applying
a soft cloth first to the wound and then on top of that wheat flour, a woman should
let her hot breast milk fall upon the flour, and after that another cloth is laid and
more flour. Here the entry specifies the milk of a woman who has borne a male child
if the patient is a man.
In Henslow’s collection (1899), woman’s milk is used in the treatment of other
illnesses. For a migraine or for neuralgia (81), a plaster for the head is made to apply
on top of a linen cloth. The plaster is made of herbs and plants ground and mixed
with the milk of a woman who has borne a male child, but in this treatment, the
recipe insists that the woman be a married woman. For an illness called “the falling
evil,” a hedgehog is roasted until it becomes powder and then this is put in the
patient’s food; the patient should also drink the milk of a woman who is nursing her
first child (70). For a person who has lost the ability to speak (102), a crystal bead is
ground, mixed with the milk of a woman who has borne a male child, and given the
patient to drink. And to know whether a patient is going to live or die, a test is
performed (44): a woman should milk over (a bucket of?) the patient’s urine; if the
milk falls down to the bottom, the patient will die, but if it floats, the patient will
live.
Another leechbook, Medical Society of London 136 (ed. Dawson 1934), consists
of medical recipes written in Middle English around 1444 that are based heavily on
18
Frenesy in Middle English refers to madness and insanity (Kurath). The Gilbertus Anglicus itself
defines frenesy as an “aposte in the brain’s front ventricule or in its skins caused by blood or choler” (Getz
1991, p. 330). I assume that the text gives a perceived cause of the illness.
19
I am assuming here that the mixture is applied to the sore rather than ingested since this reading is
more consistent with the recipes that follow.

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 481

much earlier Latin and, ultimately, Greek sources. Again, woman’s milk is used in
the treatment of aching eyes (23), but in this particular entry, the milk of two women
is specified (milk of the mother and of the daughter). For treatment of deafness (99),
the gall of a hare, strong liquor, and woman’s milk are mixed together and put in the
ear.
Woman’s milk in Dawson’s et al. (1934) is again specified in the treatment of
wounds to the head. If the bone is protruding, the patient will die, but if it is not and
the patient is not vomiting, the patient will live. The treatment that ensues on 43 is
similar to one on 51: the wound is wrapped in linen cloth, covered with flour, and
then a woman who is feeding a male child, if the patient is a man, milks over the
flour. For broken bones in the head (45), turpentine, wax, and rosin are melted on
the fire and then vinegar, the juice of specified herbs, and woman’s milk are added
and then applied to the wound. A recipe for a medicinal plaster called “Gratia Dei”
is mentioned in three variations for the treatment of wounds (117, 119). The roots
and stalks of select herbs are washed and ground, boiled in wine, wrung through a
cloth, and then the liquid boiled again. A half pound of prepared wax molten in the
milk of a woman who is nursing a male child is added to the mixture and applied to
the wound (117). In a variation presented on 119, the milk of a woman nursing a
male child must set out in a glass until the next day and then this is mixed with the
other ingredients. For all sores, when the Gratia Dei plaster is ready, the recipe on
119 specifies that the preparer wet their hands in woman’s milk before putting the
plaster in boxes. For the swelling of a wound (293), select plants are stamped and
mixed with honey and woman or goat’s milk to make into a paste for application to
the wound.
In Dawson’s collection, woman’s milk is used as an ingredient in the treatment of
other ailments. If a patient is unable to sleep (263), a mixture made of leek-seed,
woman’s milk, and the white of an egg is applied to the temples. To cease weeping
(295), a plaster made of henbane seed, whites of eggs, vinegar, woman’s milk, and
incense is applied to the head and the stomach. And for a woman having difficulty
breastfeeding (197), crystal is ground, mixed with the milk of another woman, and
then given the patient to drink, although the woman must not be told what milk it is.
For the sake of comparison, we may look as well at Henning Larsen’s 1931
transcription and translation of Royal Irish Academy 23. D. 43, An Old Icelandic
Medical Miscellany. The manuscript was written in Old Icelandic in the fifteenth
century but the recipes are based on much earlier sources. A number of recipes
include woman’s milk as ingredient for the treatment of the eyes and the ears. For
treatment of the eyes, woman’s milk is mixed with crushed incense and the white of
an egg (175), or in another (205), with wormwood and wine, strained through a
cloth, and then rubbed on the eye. On 206, the reference to milk is gendered, calling
for the milk of a woman who has borne a male child. On 205, either woman’s milk
or cow’s milk may be used. For ear ache, woman’s milk is mixed with the juice of
an onion (154), or for torn ears, sheep’s gall is used.
Larsen’s collection includes woman’s milk in the treatment of other illnesses. For
the treatment of fever (136 and 212), only three drops of milk from a woman who
has borne a male child are placed in a soft egg and given the patient to eat, but a
complete stranger to the patient must present the prepared sick dish to the patient.

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482 R. A. Buck

For the treatment of jaundice (167), woman’s milk, mixed with other ingredients, is
put in the patient’s nose. For treatment of chest cough (167), woman’s milk is mixed
with the juice of leeks. Woman’s milk, mixed with other ingredients, is applied
to the foot for treatment of a scab (169) and is also used in the treatment of
hemorrhoids (175).

Woman’s Milk, Women’s Bodies

The sampling of medical recipe books sketched above shows that, in later medieval
texts, in addition to the treatment of the eyes and ears, woman’s milk is used as an
ingredient in medical recipes that treat a variety of other illnesses. Woman’s milk, in
the majority of recipes, is used externally and applied, along with other substances,
on the patient’s body in the form of salve, ointment, and plaster for sores, wounds,
insomnia, incessant crying, and chest cough, or in the form of drops which are
placed in the eyes or ears, or in the form of an enema to purge the rectum. In the Old
Icelandic collection, woman’s milk is applied as well to the foot, to the rectum for
hemorrhoids, and, in the treatment of jaundice, up the nose. In only a few recipes,
woman’s milk is administered in the patient’s food and ingested (for fever) or drunk
(for stomach upset, loss of speech, difficulty breastfeeding). So well into the later
medieval period, woman’s milk continued to be viewed as efficacious in particular
healing remedies and was over time applied in a larger range of illnesses.
It is noticeable here, though, that, if woman’s milk grounds itself in larger
popular healing traditions which associate it and women’s bodies with symbolic and
spiritual healing and power, the illnesses mentioned here, as well as in the Anglo-
Saxon texts, do not appear to be the most serious of illnesses: eye and ear ailments,
stomach upset, insomnia, dry breast milk, sores, ulcers, and chest cough, for
example, are hardly illnesses which require the solicitation of a power which
represents the symbol of life-force.20 So we are left to wonder why then milk and
woman’s milk have only limited powers: the efficacy of that power when put to
practice in healing is in only minimal ways.
In the recipe on 197 (Dawson) for the treatment of breastfeeding difficulties, we
get a very brief glimpse of how women, when they are the patient, respond to these
recipes constructed by the medical healing tradition when they involve drinking
another woman’s milk. The entry suggests that the healer should anticipate some
resistance since the healer is specifically warned in the entry not to reveal to the
patient which milk she is drinking. When drunk or ingested as food, woman’s milk
is generally mixed with strange or exotic substances, such as powder of roasted
hedgehog, foam from a snail, or crystal or a crystal bead (a rosary bead, perhaps?).
In the Old Icelandic collection, in contrast, woman’s milk is prepared in a
nourishing sick dish: it is placed in a soft egg.
Again, from the popular healing tradition, the type of person administering the
recipe, or providing the milk, is often particularly specified and viewed as an essential

20
However, Cameron (1993, p. 11) does remind us that eye and ear ailments were more serious than we
imagine today because they commonly led to infection.

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Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts 483

component in the healing process. For instance, on 136 and 212 (both in Larsen), a
stranger must bring the prepared dish; on 23 (Dawson), the woman’s milk provided
must be from two women–a mother and her daughter (also in Pliny, VIII, 53); on 81
(Henslow), the milk must be from a married woman; on 70, the woman must be
nursing her first child (Henslow); a recipe on 311 (Dawson) specifies “the younger the
woman the better.”
In a few recipes, the gender of the patient must coincide with the gender of the
child being nursed (12 Getz; 51 Henslow; 43 Dawson), but most recipes prefer the
milk of a woman nursing a male child, even when the gender of the patient is not
specified, thus again, as in the Anglo-Saxon texts, suggesting a more privileged
status associated with bearing the perceived more powerful and potent gender. Does
the fact that she is bearing a male change the perceived properties of the milk,
making it more efficacious (thus giving agency to the male gender to produce this
change in quality)? Or does the milk acquire these properties as a result of the fact
that her body is already strong and robust, thus allowing her to produce a male child
(i.e., giving perceived agency to the female body for producing the change)?
Whatever the rationale, it is clear that the female body producing a female child was
perceived in different ways. In only one recipe (12 Getz) is the milk of a woman
nursing a female child specified: a recipe for the treatment of insanity or madness.
This is perhaps not surprising: medieval lore reveals beliefs associating madness in
women with an understanding of the physiology of women’s sexual bodies (Jacquart
and Thomasset 1988, 174–175; Williams and Echols 1994, 40–41).
In the reading of these recipes, we are struck by the active, searching-out of
women in their everyday activities that would have been necessary in the
preparation of these recipes. Women would have been continually sought after,
interrupted from their daily chores and activities, perhaps led away from the private
space of their homes, so that their bodies could be used actively in the preparation of
these medicines. In all the recipes, women, because their bodies and their milk
continue to be associated with food, healing, and nourishment, are frequently being
directed to do things–outwardly and publicly, sometimes in embarrassing ways—
with their bodies. This point, however, assumes that woman’s milk, as ingredient,
must be supplied by women to meet the needs and demands of healers and
practitioners. There is no doubt that woman’s milk would have been a more readily
accessible ingredient to women healers—and that this direction might have taken a
different form if conducted within the community of women.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Paul Szarmach and Western Michigan University for their support
during the research stage of this project.

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