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About Sinéad Spearing
Sinéad Spearing is a writer, medical folklorist, and leading voice in the revival of Old English healing traditions. Her work uncovers the lives of the women once labelled witches — the cunning women, midwives, and herbalists who acted as early physicians — and the remedies they used. She is the author of Old English Medical Remedies, A History of Women in Medicine, and the historical novel Cunning Woman, inspired by a real witch trial in her village of Goudhurst. Her research highlights remedies with modern relevance — including one now shown to cure MRSA — with more to be revealed in her forthcoming book.
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🌿 Interview Topics
1. The Forgotten Physicians: Reviving the Women Behind the Witch Trials
How folk healers, herbalists, and spiritual midwives were erased from history — and why we need to remember them now.
2. Cunning Woman: A Novel Rooted in Witch Trials, Exile, and Return
Inspired by a real 1656 witch trial in her home village, Sinéad wrote Cunning Woman as both fiction and testimony — echoing her own experience of being spiritually cast out for telling the truth.
3. Breath and Bramble: Healing Through Story, Memory, and Soil
A glimpse into Sinéad’s forthcoming memoir — weaving personal trauma, ancestral echoes, and the journey back to sacred female knowledge.
4. Women, Wisdom, and the Old English Mind
A deeper look at the psychological and spiritual intelligence of ancient remedies — including the one now shown to cure MRSA — and why this lost knowledge matters more than ever.
🌿 Current Research: Rediscovering Remedies
Sinéad is currently undertaking original research into the efficacy and pharmacological structure of Old English herbal remedies — many of which have long been dismissed as superstition, despite their recorded use over centuries.
Building on the landmark discovery that one such remedy, found in Bald’s Leechbook, can cure MRSA where modern antibiotics fail, her work focuses on the wider medicinal intelligence hidden in these texts. She brings a rare combination of skills to this research, drawing on her experience translating Old English manuscripts — including Bald’s Leechbook III and Lacnunga — alongside historical, contextual, and folkloric analysis.
Sinéad’s aim is to recover, evaluate, and, where possible, revive some of these forgotten formulations — particularly those that may still hold relevance for contemporary health and wellbeing. Her work also explores the psychological and ritual dimensions of healing as practised by the early English cunning folk.
She is currently seeking:
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Conversations and collaborations with researchers, herbalists, pharmacologists, and folklorists
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Support from funders or institutions with an interest in folk medicine, women’s knowledge, and cultural recovery
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Dialogue with practitioners working with plant-based and ancestral healing traditions today
If you’re interested in contributing to or supporting this work, please reach out via the contact form below.