The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Lan­cashire’s Spe­cial Col­lec­tions con­tain a large num­ber of books, doc­u­ments, and his­tor­i­cal resources of both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al impor­tance. For exam­ple, the Livesey Col­lec­tion forms an inter­na­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant resource for the study of the Tem­per­ance Move­ment, while the Jere­mi­ah Hor­rocks Obser­va­to­ry archive con­sists of records and papers from the Jere­mi­ah Hor­rocks Obser­va­to­ry on Moor Park in Pre­ston. The Wain­wright Col­lec­tion, donat­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty by the Wain­wright Con­ser­v­a­tive Club in Black­pool, com­pris­es large­ly late Vic­to­ri­an texts cov­er­ing a range of top­ics relat­ed to British and Irish polit­i­cal his­to­ry. The col­lec­tions have recent­ly found a new home on the Pre­ston campus. 

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Lan­cashire Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, I research archival mate­ri­als relat­ed to the 18^th and 19^th cen­turies’ phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal recipes and home eco­nom­ics guide­books of the same peri­od. As observed in Lan­cashire Archives, at that time, med­i­cine becomes a more for­mal activ­i­ty and a reg­u­lat­ed pro­fes­sion. This is con­comi­tant with a struc­tur­al era­sure of women from prac­tices relat­ed to the man­age­ment of health. While med­i­cine becomes men-led, a greater amount of lit­er­a­ture impart­ing women with moral prin­ci­ples is being pub­lished. Soon after this, domes­tic sci­ences emerge, anchor­ing women fur­ther away from activ­i­ties and work they once were at the cen­tre of, such as farm­ing, trad­ing and heal­ing, to only name a few.

Anoth­er per­plex­ing phe­nom­e­non observed through­out med­ical recipes is the inclu­sion ingre­di­ents derived from non-native species, which was ren­dered pos­si­ble by the British Colo­nial Trade. This high­lights anoth­er form of inequal­i­ty and flawed pow­er dynam­ic. The pres­ence in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal books of car­da­mon, gin­ger, cur­cuma and oth­er spices is a reminder of the British Empire’s mer­can­tilist and con­trolled trade, which was deeply root­ed in pri­ori­tis­ing nation­al wealth through the cre­ation of eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties. These exploita­tive prac­tices laid the foun­da­tions for glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, influ­enc­ing pat­terns of trade that per­sist today.

The drag­on and the desert

Give way to the gar­den and the lake. 

We have seen the drag­on laid low 

But the desert is still with us. 

There are ruins everywhere,

Sham­bles where once were homes,

And des­o­la­tion in place of civilization. 

The squads of gravediggers

In man’s des­o­lat­ed world

The debris at our doors.

I

DESERTS

“In France the war has made sev­er­al kinds of desert, each with a qual­i­ty of its own, derived from the way in which it was made. Ver­dun I have not seen. Of the oth­er deserts the first in date was

that of the Somme bat­tle­field. In ear­li­er parts of the ​“West­ern Front” it has been drawn, in sam­ple, sev­er­al times. It spreads so far that, in bulk, it can only be seen from the air. It is the most even­ly fin­ished of all these made deserts. From the Ancre to the San­terre you pass through dif­fer­ent kinds of land­scape. There are lit­tle hills, riv­er mead­ows, and a high grain-bear­ing flat. Over them all there was laid in 1916 a kind of spot­ted brown coun­ter­pane or mask which makes them all look alike. The spots on this cloth are dense along its mid­dle and grow less dense towards its fringe all round. To an eye that knew the coun­try well before the war, it must seem now as if the vil­lages, with all their dif­fer­ences of look, and the var­i­ous greens or yel­lows of the old crops, must sure­ly be hid­den under this spot­ted cov­er­let. But real­ly they are not there, and the brown is that of bare and raw earth, and the spots are shell-holes.” Muir­head Bone GHQ, France, 1917