Country remedies - Gabrielle Hatfield

For several years, the author has been gathering information concerning domestic plant remedies used within living memory in rural East Anglia. Informants have been for the most part elderly country people, and in almost every instance, this information has never been written down, but has been preserved orally from one generation to the next. A surprisingly large number of these native plant remedies has come to light, and an analysis of them brings out many interesting points, including the apparent accuracy of oral testimony, when compared with written information on the subject of plant remedies. Another perhaps surprising point to emerge is that new plant remedies are still being developed, some involving the use of widely grown food vegetables.

The author was fortunate enough to come across manuscript material of work done by Dr Mark Taylor, a regional health officer in Norwich in the 1920's, who carried out a similar study of East Anglian domestic medicine seventy years ago. However, although he presented some of his results to the Folklore Society, most of it was never published. The present author's information, presented against the background of Dr Taylor's work some seventy years ago, provides an interesting picture of the continuity and change in the use of plant remedies in rural East Anglia. This book won the Michaelis-Jean Ratcliff prize for significant contributions to the study of folklore in 1993.