Excluded from formal education in medicine or botany, Renaissance women created informal networks of learning and observation that allowed them to engage with practical science.3 Recent research has revealed an astonishing amount of scientific knowledge inherent in medical and cosmetic remedy texts written by women or based on their recipes – not just knowledge about the properties of ingredients (what plants, minerals, animal products are efficacious), but about chemical processes as well. For many women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this was standard domestic wisdom. These
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