Book Details
[ATKYNS (Arabella)] pseudonym.. The Family Magazine: in Two Parts. Part I. Containing Useful Directions in all the Branches of House-Keeping and Cookery. Particularly Shewing How to Buy-it the Best of all Sorts of Provisions; as Poultry-Ware, Butchers-Meat, Fish, Fruit, &c. With several Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Pickling, Confectionary, Distilling, Brewing, Cosmeticks, &c. Together with the Art of making English Wines, &c. Part II. Containing a Compendious Body of Physick; Succinctly Treating of all the Diseases and Accidents Incident to Men, Women, and Children: with Practical Rules and Directions for the Preserving and Restoring of Health, and Prolonging of Life...1741
London: Printed for J. Osborn. First edition, xiv, [ii], 123, [3], [2], 324pp., part II has a separate title-page, pagination and register, without endpaper, cont. calf, rubbed, hinges cracked. "The preface is signed 'Arabella Atkyns', which the B.M. catalogue says is a pseudonym. In it she states that the medical portion, which is much larger than the cookery, is taken from a common-place book of her brother who was a physician. It may be mentioned that she is the first lady who apologizes for her boldness in venturing to treat certain maladies which a lady would hardly be expected ti include. The cookery part is well arranged, the medical part is full of horrors. The treatment for appendicitis is to 'apply a live puppy to the naked belly' and follow up with a cataplasm of rotten apples or of 'sheeps-dung boil'd with milk'."—Oxford, English Cookery Books. Oxford, p.71; Maclean, p.49; Bitting, p.550; Cagle, 673; Pennell, p.150; Simon, 658.
Stock #24863