Abstract Sleep loss was a vital health concern for early modern people, and inducing sleep was essential to healthcare practices. This article traces how English householders sought to procure sleep. Examining the botanical materials, methods and knowledge underpinning soporific recipes in manuscript and printed collections c.1500–1750, we identify olfactory manipulation as the principal strategy in homemade sleep therapies. Scent-based remedies were developed domestically through material experimentation, drawing on the expanding range of soporifics resulting from global trade and colonialism. These experiments are an important facet of the ‘material Renaissance’, which became embedded in the gendered labour regimens of household life.
Fletcher et al. (Wed,) studied this question.