Illness was so frequent in the seventeenth century that few girls can have reached maturity without the opportunity of practising the art of nursing at home; but amongst the “common people,” that is to say all the class of independent farmers and tradesmen, the housewife can hardly have found time to perfect her skill in nursing to a fine art. Probably the highest level was reached in the households of the gentry, where idleness was not yet the accepted hall-mark of a lady, and the mistress felt herself to be responsible for the training of her children and servants in every branch of the domestic arts, amongst which were reckoned both medicine and nursing. B. _Surgery and Medicine._ The position held by mediæval women in the arts of healing is shown in such books as Mallory’s “Morte d’Arthur.” When wounds proved intractable to the treatment of the rough and ready surgeons who attended in the vicinity of tourneys, knights sought help from some high-born lady renowned for her skill in medicine. It is true that popular belief assigned her success to witchcraft rather than to the knowledge and understanding acquired by diligent study and experience, but a tendency to faith in the occult was universal, and the reputation of the ladies probably bore some relation to their success in the cures attempted, for, according to the author of “The Golden Bough,” science is the lineal descendant of witchcraft. The position of pre-eminence as consultants was no longer retained by women in the seventeenth century. Schools and Universities had been founded, where men could study medicine and anatomy, and thus secure for themselves a higher standard of knowledge and efficiency; but, though women were excluded from these privileges they were not yet completely ousted from the medical profession, and as a domestic art medicine was still extensively practised by them. Every housewife was expected to understand the treatment of the minor ailments at least of her household, and to prepare her own drugs. Commonplace books of this period contain recipes for making mulberry syrup, preserving fruit and preparing meats, mingled with, for example, prescriptions for plague water, which is “very good against the plague, the small-pox, the measles, surfeitts ... and is of a sovereign nature to be given in any sickness.” “An oyle good for any ach—and ointments for sore eyes or breasts, or stone in the kidney or bladder.” And in addition, “my brother Jones his way of making inks.”[584] “The Ladies Dispensatory” contains “the Natures, Vertues and Qualities of all Herbs, and Simples usefull in Physick. Reduced into a Methodical Order,” the diseases to be treated including those of men, as well as women and children.[585] Footnote 584: _Add. MSS._ 36308. Footnote 585: Sowerby (Leonard). _The Ladies’ Dispensatory._ 1651.