next page :[link]
previous page :[link]

= Nutmeg, to cure All Kind of Illness

Nutmegs, deriving from its rarity, it had some powerful medicinal qualities ascribed to it by the quacks of the time, in common with most exotic spices. For chesty coughs, doctors recommended mulled wine suffused with nutmeg. Cloves were said to cure earache, pepper stifled colds, while those embarrassed by trapped wind were recommended to take an extraordinary pot-pourri of 15 spices including cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg - a recipe that would have been out of reach of all but the flatulent rich. Ten grammes of saffron taken with sweet wine was enough, it was claimed, to bring back the dead. There were not known to be any side-effects. Source : [link] Copyright Spectator Feb 27, 1999

Seventeenth century European commerce was dominated by the spice trade described in Charles Corn's Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade (Kodansha International), and Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). That's not so surprising since spices served as both condiments and pharmaceuticals-nutmeg alone was thought to cure everything from the plague to coughs to the "bloody flux." Source :[link]
Its fruit was believed to cure the plague or `sweating sickness'.(Copyright Spectator Feb 27, 1999)

Almost all of the world's spices were found exclusively on the remote hundred or so specks of islands that now make up a single province of Indonesia, Maluku. According to Milton, the spices that these islands produced drove world exploration for centuries, and in fact, one of the book's considerable charms is Milton's ability to relate the spice trade to exploration. From Marco Polo to John Cabot to Ferdinand Magellan to Christopher Columbus to Thomas Cavendish to Sir Francis Drake to Henry Hudson, they were all hunting the same grail: a route to the Spice Islands. The search for the Northwest Passage across the North American continent resulted in the discovery of Hudson's Bay. A similar search for a Northeast Passage across Russia ended with the deaths of hundreds of men. Source :John Berthelsen. Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Aug 19, 1999. [link]

Hetalia, England aph, Spain aph, Egypt aph, Italy aph, Macau aph & Netherlands aph belonged to Himaruya H.
Spice Islands is Maluku Islands in Indonesia.
Indonesia aph, Malaysia aph & Portugal aph based on Himaruya's sketch. ([link])
India OC & Mughal OC design by dinosaurusgede
Philippines OC design by
Brunei Darussalam OC design by
Japan 17th century design by