The British Society for the History of Pharmacy has awarded the Leslie Matthews Medal to Dr Anne Stobart. She is an expert on seventeenth-century domestic medicine and has carried out research on historical medicinal recipes. It has been six years since the BSHP last awarded the Leslie Matthews Medal, its highest honour, for original and scholarly work in the wide-ranging history of pharmacy.
The British Society for the History of Pharmacy focuses on the development of the history of British pharmacy, from past apothecaries to today’s pharmacist in the community, hospital, academia or industry.
Anne has a background of teaching in further and higher education. She is trained as a consultant medical herbalist and joined Middlesex University, London, in 2000, to teach on and manage the degree programmes in complementary health sciences. She has a long association with the University of Exeter, having gained a postgraduate degree in women’s studies in the 1990s. That programme led to her interest in the history of domestic medicine and women healers. Anne’s doctoral thesis on seventeenth-century recipes and household medicine formed the basis of the publication of Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (Bloomsbury, 2016). Currently, Anne holds an honorary research post at the University of Exeter with links to the History Department and the Centre for Rural Policy Research.
As a key founder of the Herbal History Research Network in 2009, Anne has 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). This text is freely available to researchers as an open access publication. From ancient to modern history, the Herbal History Research Network continues to bring researchers and practitioners together through seminars and a thriving online discussion group.
“I feel truly honoured by this award, and I want to pay homage to colleagues in ethnobotany, herbal medicine and history of medicine research who have provided inspiration and support over the years.”
Anne will receive the award at the forthcoming British Society for the History of Pharmacy conference. The presentation will be followed by her keynote lecture on ‘Researching historical medicinal recipes’. The annual conference will be on 5th April 2025, at the George Marshall Medical Museum, Worcester.
Anne is also the author of two Permanent Publications titles: The Medicinal Forest Garden Handbook (2020) and Trees and Shrubs that Heal (2023).
