"Balles for the face. Take greate Allecant reasons [raisins] a quarter of a pounde, stone them but wash them not and beate them in a morter very fine, take as many almonds, not Jordans, but of ye comon sort and blanch them and drye them in a cloth very well and beate them in a stone morter also very fine, when you have done thus to them bothe, mingle them bothe together and beate them againe, and putt to it half a quarter of a pounde of browne leavened bread, wheaten bread, and beate them altogeather and mingle them well togeather and then take it and make it in little balles and then wash yor face at night with one of them in fayre water. Yf you will have this only to wash yor hands put in a little Venice soape but putt none of that in for youre face." "For them theyr speech faileth. Take a handfull of ye cropps of Rosemary, a handfull of sage and a handfull of Isop and boile them in malmsey till it be soft, then put them into Lynen clothes and laye about the nape of the neck and the pulses of the armes as whott [hot] as it may be suffred daily, as it shal be thought mete and it will help it by God's grace. For the same. Take staves acre and beate it and sowe it in a linnen cloth and make a bagg noe bigger than a beane; if he can chow it in his mouth lett hym, if not then lay it upon his tongue." To the modern mind the medical recipes to be found in these still-room books sound truly alarming, but in _The Lady Sedley her Receipt book_ they are not more so than the prescriptions which were contributed by the most eminent physicians of that day. In his paper[129] on this MS. Dr. Guthrie quotes many of these recipes, amongst them one from the famous Dr. Stephens,[130] so frequently quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby and in other still-room books of the period. In Lady Sedley's book his recipe is introduced thus: "A copy to make the sovreigns't water that ever was devised by man, which Dr. Stephens a physician of great cuning and of long experience did use and therewith did cure many great cases, and all was kept in secret until a little before his death; when the Archbishop of Canterbury got it from him." Amongst the other contributors to this MS. were no fewer than three of the doctors who attended Charles II. in his last illness, and if they gave the king even in a mild form medicines resembling those we find in this book, Macaulay's description that "they tortured him for some hours like an Indian at the stake" can hardly have been exaggerated. There is a "Receipt for Convulsion Fitts" from Sir Edward Greaves (the first physician to be created a baronet) consisting of peony roots, dead man's skull, hoofs of asses, white amber and bezoar; and the famous Dr. Sydenham contributed a "Prescription for the head" in which, not content with the seventy-two ingredients of which Venice treacle consisted, he added Wormwood, orange peel, angelica and nutmeg.