My Charming Ancestor:

Lost Spells & Sick Cattle

An essay for the Recipe Project: Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine, 2022

This is a short piece I wrote for The Recipe Project on discovering a manuscript of remedies for treating cattle written in 1768 by my 6X great grandfather. The cures draw on an impressive range of herbs and toxic chemicals, but also on magic in the form of two verbal charms. I became curious about what in meant to be a charmer and what such documents might reveal about the human-animal relations of the past. 

Read Here.

Author: Catherine Flood 
Editor: Josh Schlachet
Image (left) reproduced with permission of West Sussex Record Office. Image (right) courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

The performance of a charm could involve sounds, substances, and touch, becoming an embodied experience for both charmer and non-human charmee.