Leonard Sowerby's self-healing manual for women, The Ladies' Dispensatory, emerged in England in 1652 amidst an abundance of medical self-help books for the lay citizen. Written for both the common patient and the amateur health provider, these manuals of home remedies provided their readers with a variety of potential solutions to common ailments or disease. Sowerby's Dispensatory was written primarily for curing women's health problems, and in that regard, focuses heavily on gynecologic problems (the Dispensatory includes numerous preparations for...