Pharmacy

Seaweed in the medicine chest

Creelman’s complaint

Martin Martin records many seaweed remedies in his seventeenth century Description of the Western Islands of Scotland¹. His text reveals a remarkable number of ailments that seaweed was used to combat, including headaches and fevers, sleeplessness and costiveness, colic and distemper, burns and boils. 

Seaweed has also been used in wound dressing, a practice still used today. It seems unlikely that Orcadians were not making use of the sea’s bounty the way they were elsewhere in Scotland – but as with food, it is the West coast and the Highlands that hold the stronger tradition of seaweed use. Beith notes that seaweeds ‘held an important place in the Gaelic materia medica and daily diet, [the] iodine content being particularly important ’.² 

Dulse was believed to have panacean properties. Taking dulse from Geo Odin with water from the Well of Kildinguie, on the island of Stronsay, Orkney, allowed the pilgrim to ‘escape all maladies except black death ’³, the legend is included in Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate. 

In Remembered Remedies a woman from Sutherland credits dulse pudding with being a ‘great pick-me-up ’⁴, in the same book a Portree recipe for dulse soup to cure rheumatism is passed down three centuries from a spae wife (a woman of supernatural wisdom) who lived in a cottage below the high tide mark. 

Martin Martin records that, in order to encourage the body to expel afterbirth, dulse was laid on the mother’s belly.

‘A large handful of the sea-plant dulse, growing upon stone, applied outwardly…takes away the afterbirth with great ease and safety.  The remedy is to be repeated until it produce the desired effect, though some hours may be intermitted; the fresher the dulse is, the operation is the stronger, for if it is above two or three days old, little is to be expected from this case. The plant seldom or never fails of success, though the patient had been delivered of several days before; and of this I have lately seen an extraordinary instance at Edinburgh in Scotland, when a patient was given over as dead ‘⁵

Neil Sinclair from Shapinsay recalled, from his days as a creelman, a seaweed cure for irritation of the backside, a complaint caused by sitting in wet boats for long hours without oilskins. The damp derriere could be soothed, he was told, by an old Stronsay method: take some ware and rub it vigorously until it oozes jelly, then rub the gel on. Mr Sinclair vouched that it had cleared the irritation up by the next day. Some of the benefits expressed in traditional medicine uses include antibiotic, antiviral, anti-coagulant and anti-inflammatory properties.⁶ 

Seaweed was used in obstetrics:  laminaria tents, the dried stipes [‘stems’ or rods] of tangles, were used to dilate the cervix gradually as the stipe swelled⁷. It was the use of tangle stipes as knife handles in the Western Isles that alerted the medical profession to their potential in 1863: the fresh stipe would shrink and harden around the blade, a process that could be reversed when in contact with moisture. 

The following recipe for caragheen is taken from  F. Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen

Gather the weed on the rocks, wash the salt and sand well out of it, and spread it on the rocks, or the window-sill, or on a white cloth on the grass, and leave it there for several days to bleach and dry. When thoroughly dry put it in bags and hang these up in a dry place, preferably the kitchen. When required, allow a heaped tablespoon to each quart of milk, and put both into a saucepan. Let is simmer till the milk begins to thicken, strain, and pour it into a bowl and allow it to cool and set.  An old Manse recipe gives a stick of cinnamon, a bit of lemon peel, and a lump of sugar to taste. The jelly may be made with fresh carrageen in season. Carrageen contains iodine and sulphur and used to be recommended for chest complaints.⁸

1 & 5 Martin, M. (1999) A description of the Western Islands of Scotland ca 1695. Edinburgh: Birlinn

2 Beith, M. (2004) Healing Threads: Traditional Medicines of the Highlands and Islands. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd

3 Neill, P. (1806) A Tour Through Some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland: A. Constable and Company

4 Barker, A. (2011) Remembered remedies: traditional Scottish plant lore. Edinburgh: Birlinn

6 Kenicer, G., Bridgewater, S. & Milliken, W. (2000) ‘The Ebb and Flow of Scottish Seaweed Use’. Botanical Journal of Scotland 52 (2), 119

7 Rubin, B. (1977) ‘Laminaria digitata: A Checkered Career’. Economic Botany 31 (1), 66–71

8McNeill, F.M. (1931) The Scots Kitchen. 3rd ed. Glasgow: Blackie & Son Ltd.