Having one Herbal by me

A few months ago, I was shown the medical dictionary which Patrick Brontë owned and annotated.  Published in 1823 (when he had been incumbent of Haworth for three years) it is touching that some of his most detailed notes in it relate to alcoholism (alcohol abuse contributed to or caused the death of his only son) and cataract surgery (which he underwent himself without anaesthetic).

The Brontë Society staff member who showed it to me wondered how common it would have been for an Anglican incumbent of the time to have such a dictionary.  I didn’t know that, but I did know that 175 years earlier the most influential guide book to Anglican ministry (George Herbert’s County Parson) strongly recommended the parson “seeing one Anatomy, reading one Book of Physic, having one Herbal by him”, the latter to enable the preparation of remedies (“for salves, his wife seeks not the city, but prefers her garden and fields before all outlandish gums”).

It set me to wondering what the equivalent might be for me.  Clearly the National Health Service has removed or greatly reduced the need for a country parson to act as a medical practitioner, although I was being encouraged recently by an ecumenical colleague to make sure that some people in our churches had First Aid qualifications as a basic part of our safeguarding provision.

It is actually a short course as a Mental First Aider which I need to undertake next; other local clergy have highly commended a piece of locally provided training of this sort.  It links with a larger piece of work in which the ecumenical colleague and I have been engaged alongside the ‘social prescriber’ who is based at Haworth’s Medical Centre.

Social prescribing was being explored in North East Lincolnshire in 2015 and it lies behind the column I wrote for the Keighley News a few weeks ago.  The social prescriber’s role is to give proper attention to a patient referred to him or her as potentially being better prescribed society rather than medicine.  This involves the social prescriber having an extensive informed knowledge of local provision (perhaps health walking groups, bereavement support groups or social groups for the potentially isolated - much of which may well be provided by churches or at least use church premises).

When we met our local social prescriber, we asked him which needs he found most difficult to meet – what gaps there are in local provision.  He said it was the needs of men, often in middle age, and most often with mental health problems.  I was already aware of a family in the village raising money for MIND following the suicide of a young mother last year (those who order their Mermen for MIND calendar will find me in the background in November – so do so) and my colleague was already supporting someone seeking to establish a mental health peer support group. 

So we have worked with others to kick start an informal forum in Haworth (we’ve just had our second lunch and chat together, with churches, Councillors, Medical Centre and police among those represented) and we have been following this up with those who do provide mental health support not too far away to make sure more does happen in the Worth Valley soon.

I’ve also had pastoral contacts recently which provoke a quite different idea about what the modern equivalent of Herbert’s ‘Herbal’ and Bronte’s medical dictionary would be for a contemporary parson.  I suspect it would be an on-line subscription to the sort of professional website with up-to-date information about benefit legislation, the sort of web-site which advice centres and lawyers access.  But that is for another day.

The mask was produced at Friday Church at St James’, Cross Roads last week as we continue to prepare for Harvest Festival this year when the set Gospel reading will be about the way in which birds do not worry about fashion or barn storage.