Historian of medicinal recipes to receive the Leslie Matthews Medal from the British Society for the History of Pharmacy
Dr Anne Stobart
A renowned expert of 17th century domestic medicine has been awarded the highest honour by a prestigious national society.
Dr Anne Stobart, a researcher of historical medicinal recipes, is to receive the Leslie Matthews Medal from the British Society for the History of Pharmacy.
It is the first time in six years that the Society has bestowed the medal, which it reserves for original and scholarly work in the wide-ranging history of pharmacy.
Dr Stobart will receive it at the forthcoming British Society for the History of Pharmacy conference in April. The presentation will be followed by her delivering a keynote lecture on ‘researching historical medicinal recipes’.
“This is a great honour from my colleagues in the history of medicine,” said Dr Stobart, on hearing the news that she had been chosen by the awards committee for the medal. “I felt quite emotional when I was informed by the Society, and I would like to pay homage to all of my colleagues in ethnobotany, herbal medicine and history of medicine research who have inspired and supported me over the years.”
Dr Stobart is a consultant medical herbalist and joined Middlesex University in 2000, to teach on and manage its degree programmes in complementary health sciences. She has a long association with the Exeter, having gained a postgraduate degree in women’s studies in the 1990s – a programme which led to her interest in the history of domestic medicine and women healers.
Her doctoral thesis on seventeenth-century recipes and household medicine formed the basis of her book, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (Bloomsbury, 2016). Dr Stobart now holds an honorary research post at the University with links to the Department of Archaeology and History and the Centre for Rural Policy Research.
As a key founder of the Herbal History Research Network in 2009, Dr Stobart has steadily promoted links between herbal practitioners and historians of medicine. She jointly edited the publication Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine: From Classical Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Bloomsbury, 2014).
The British Society for the History of Pharmacy originated from a committee of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Its Leslie Matthews Medal was created in 1992, and has been awarded ten times in the intervening years. It recognises original and scholarly work in the history of British pharmacy, and evaluation is based on competence of research, skill in interpretation and ability in presentation.
