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By Alexandra KennedyFor 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 practice? When viewed in contrast to her husband’s writings (also housed in the Ashmole Collection), MS Ashmole 1390 establishes Mary’s engaged involvement in recipe collection and recording. Mary’s active role in her practice becomes especially clear when we look at her recipe for “the snaile milke”—a type of therapy which Jennifer Sherman Roberts has discussed here on The Recipes Project[caption id="attachment_10154" align="aligncenter" width="305"] Snail and fungi. Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Commentarii secundo aucti…Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images[/caption]Medicine brought together Sir Richard Napier and his first wife, Anne Tyringham—one of his patients, according to Richard’s casebook (MS Ashmole 177, fols. 2r-3r). After Anne’s death and during his courtship with Mary Vyner, Richard provided several therapeutic recipes of soothing baths and “distilled milk” for his soon-to-be second wife, in which Mary writes she “found great good” (MS Ashmole 1390, fol. 26r). The exchange of medical knowledge continued on throughout the couple’s marriage, evidenced in their recipes for snail milk in the diplomatic transcriptions below. This shared recipe highlights compositional similarities and differences between husband and wife’s written record of the cure:Sir Richard Napier’s recipe for “The Snayle Milk” in MS Ashmole 1447 fol. 28rMary Napier’s recipe for “the snaile milke” in MS Ashmole 1390, fol. 63rThe Snayle MilkeTake nine shell snayles with theirshells on &#38; then make a skillet ofwater boyle &#38; when it boyles putin the snayles with their shelles&#38; let them boyle up, then take themout &#38; picke them out of theirshells &#38; so put them in a pint ofmilke ready boyleinge on thefire against the snayles betaken out, &#38; so let it boyle tillit be a quarter consumed.the snaile milketake 9 shell snailes with theyrshells on &#38; make a skellet ofwater boile &#38; when it boilesput in the snailes with theyrshells on &#38; let them boileup &#38; then take them out &#38;picke them out of the shells&#38; put these into a pint ofmilke ready boileing on thefire against the snailesbee taken out &#38; so let themboile till it bee a quarter part\wasted/ boiled away.Despite the recipes’ close linguistic proximity, Mary’s spelling varies from her husband’s. Even her word choice differs in a particular moment—“so let it boyle till it be a quarter consumed” becomes, in Mary’s words, “so let them boile till it bee a quarter part \wasted/ boiled away”—the word “wasted” being an interlinear addition to the text.  Mary paints a clearer, one could argue more exacting, picture of what happens to her ingredients as they undergo chemical transformation with applied heat, when compared to her husband’s elegant but less immediate “consumed.”  The orthographic and linguistic peculiarities of Mary’s recipe indicate that she was not a passive receptacle for her husband’s cures and medical knowledge.  Indeed, she could have been the originator of the recipe. Or, perhaps, the couple shared a printed source for this cure. Whatever the recipe’s provenance, Mary owned and adapted the recipe as it made sense to her personally during manufacture.  A splotch on the right-hand corner of the page further attests to Mary’s use of the manuscript as a tool at her side while preparing recipes. We can envision Mary in her stillroom, concocting “snaile milke” with her trusty manuscript at her side, and penning in a line about how her materials transform when boiled, so she’ll know what to look for next time.Viewing Mary’s “snaile milke,” especially within the context of the Napier family papers, allows us to make contact with Mary’s lived experience of practicing medicine. And if we can achieve this contact in Mary’s case, how many more experiences of healing remain to be discovered within the pages of other recipe books, and among domestic papers in the archival setting? And how can recovering texts of women like Mary—members of families prominent in medical or scientific fields—tells us about their experiences not just as daughters and wives, but as healing practitioners and authors themselves?Works CitedOxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 177Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1390Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1447Works ConsultedDiMeo, Michelle. “Authorship and medical networks: reading attributions in early modern medical recipe books.” Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800, edited by DiMeo and Sara Pennell, Manchester University Press, 2013, pp. 25-48Ezell, Margaret J. M. “Domestic papers: manuscript culture and early modern women’s life writing.” Genre and Women’s Life-Writing in Early Modern England, edited by Julie A. Eckerle and Michelle M. Dowd, Ashgate, 2007, pp. 33-48Field, Catherine. “‘Many hands hands’: writing the self in early modern women’s recipe books.” Genre and Women’s Life-Writing in Early Modern England, edited by Julie A. Eckerle and Michelle M. Dowd, Ashgate, 2007, pp. 49-63Alexandra Kennedy graduated with a Master’s in English (1550-1700) from the University of Oxford in 2016. She earned her Bachelor’s in English at Middlebury College in 2014. She enjoys researching seventeenth-century women’s writing across lines of genre, from drama to biography to medicine. Currently a schoolteacher and freelance writer, she composes book reviews and blogs about the early modern world at www.earlymodernallie.wordpress.com. You can find her there, or on Twitter @earlymodallie.&#160;