| Description Of Item | There are no specific ingredients, the regimen is effectively a recommended diet to follow for 12 months.
It instructs to drink a mix of fresh milk and water as often as possible, to cut any liquor, but tea and coffee with a little bit of milk are also permitted.
When waking up in the morning, it instructs to drink 8 ounces of spring water and not eat for 2 hours, then to have a meal comprised of bread and milk, milk pottage, and/or tea with milk with bread and fresh butter. At dinner, it is only permitted to eat: something made from barley, oats, rice, or millet seeds; vegetables like carrots, potatoes, turnips, spinach, beans and peas; fruits when ripe, like baked pears or apple dumplings. Milk and biscuit is above all recommended but nothing salty or sour. At supper, only milk and bread is recommended.
It instructs to go to bed early (‘9 o’ clock’) and to sleep much, and to massage limbs and extremities with a ‘woolen cloth’ for half an hour before going to bed at night and before getting up in the morning to avoid the ‘fixing’ of ‘humours, knobs, and bunches’ in the joints. It also recommends to exercise, by riding on horseback, or in a coach of chair but to be wary of cold weather, wind and rain.
Lastly, in case of another painful ‘fit of the gout’, a small dose of opium or laudanum is allowed, but to use it sparsely and only as necessary.
Recipe is marginalia in library copy of Nicholas Culpeper, A Physical Directory (1650) – library reference S10.22.
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