Western Medieval Manuscripts : Medical treatises and recipes

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.5.76, written on paper in various hands, shows in its first section how closely related recipes for writing and decorating books are to those for medical healing. At the same time, the compiler also asserted the intellectual value of such craft knowledge by reference to venerable philosophical and medical authorities. Subsequently, the manuscript became a repository for short extracts from notable medical texts, namely the <i>Dome of uryne</i> by Henry Daniel (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(61);return false;'>28r-29v</a>), a rare Middle English treatise on wounds (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(65);return false;'>30r-38v</a>) based on Book Two of Guglielmo da Saliceto's Latin <i>Cyrurgia</i>, and an extract from a Latin alphabetical treatise on the properties of herbs (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(157);return false;'>76r-93v</a>). Its longest entry is a collection of about 350 medical and surgical recipes (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(83);return false;'>39r-75v</a>).</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript had a long life as a resource for medical remedies and surgical treatments. A name or names of owners of a personal medical compilation ending on f. 26v have been erased from colophons on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(59);return false;'>27r</a>. Johannes Bintreth/Buctreth is identified (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(155);return false;'>75r</a>) as an owner of a book containing a rare Middle English wound treatise (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(65);return false;'>30r-38v</a>) and the larger collection of about 350 medical recipes (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(83);return false;'>39r-75v</a>). Throughout the manuscript, notes have been added by those through whose hands the manuscript passed, strongly suggesting that it was in use from the late 15th century into the 16th and early 17th centuries. To judge by repeated marginal notes to 'Take this', beginning on f. 7v, one reader intended to make his own compilation from the first collection of recipes. 16th- or 17th-century users added on a blank page (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(60);return false;'>27v</a>) cures for stomach ailments attributed to doctors Smith, Lang, Walker and Barnesley. An anonymous user added occasional marginal clarifications to aid reading the text on the properties of herbs (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(157);return false;'>76r-93v</a>). </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Part 1 of MS Dd.5.76, ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(7);return false;'>1r-26v</a>, is a remarkable, deliberate personal compilation of craft recipes and medical recipes, the latter primarily for cankers, fevers, and wound care. The table of contents is prefaced by a unique copy of a Middle English poem, much damaged, in ten rhymed stanzas, constituting a devout penitential prayer. The rubric to the recipe collection appears in bright red ink immediately after the end of the poem (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>2r</a>), and the text of both were written by the same hand. The rubric reads 'Here begins the book of diverse materials and medicines and ointments' ('Hic incipit liber de diversis rebus et medicinis ac unguentis'), leaving little doubt that the artisanal and medical recipes to follow were conceived as one unit. This rubric continues by announcing that 'in the first place' stands the letter of Aristotle, sent to King Alexander regarding maintenance of the health of the human body ('In primis epistula aristotelis missa ad alexandrem regem de conseruacione humani corporis'). The text begins with the only decorated initial in this part of the manuscript. Latin versions of the letter of Aristotle to Alexander, known as the <i>Secretum secretorum</i>, appear in other late medieval manuscripts. Here, the letter of advice concerns personal habits, good and bad digestion, and ends with a summary of the best foods to be eaten in each season of the year. There then follows the list of the recipes to be included, corresponding to those copied into the text. However, between the table of contents and the recipes proper, the compiler inserted four items, not accounted for in the table of copied texts, which reveal his own interests (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(18);return false;'>6v-7r</a>): a charm for fevers, a 'marvelous drink' for canker and fistulas as well as internal poisons, and two Latin prayers, one to be spoken when making a medicine, and another to recite when administering a medicine. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The recipes identified in the table of contents cover eleven folios (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(19);return false;'>7r-22r</a>), and they begin with thirty craft recipes. Most of these would be useful to a scribe or illuminator of books, but there is also one for making soap that states at what point to 'set your mark on the cake', and one for dye to mark wool or wool sacks, both of which speak to wider commercial interests. One to retrieve gold or silver from an old ribbon even shows how to source these precious metals by recycling. Colour recipes as found in MS Dd.5.76 range from blacks, azure, vermilion, rose, white (ceruse), gold for illuminating letters, 'good' green, blue turnsole, and a colour 'like gold'. The ink recipes include 'Lombard ink', 'text ink' and 'black ink' as well as red, a 'fine rose' for writing and ruling pages. There are several recipes for making sizes or gums and recipes for multiplying the quantity of 'asure byce', turnsole, and wax.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The series of craft and medical recipes is divided by a rubric on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(30);return false;'>12v</a> that establishes the authority of the medical cures and clarifies their purpose: 'Here begynnes a boke of gode medicines proued with gode clerkes and oþere maysters of fesik and vsed be þam for for cancres gode medicines prowed be maystere henri arden and oþere mo mastres'. 'Master Henri Arden' is probably a misidentification of the surgeon, John Arderne. What follows are more than eighty medical recipes beginning with ten for 'canker' (that is, ulcers of various types), followed by recipes for similarly painful gout, fester, sores, wounds and an 'enposteme' (an inflammation or swelling of bad humours). Ringworms, head lice, and a skin disease called 'the fire of hell' appear later in the list. Besides such skin lesions, there are remedies for internal diseases such as stomach pains and constipation and for swellings of the neck and liver. Six recipes concern removing or growing hair or colouring it black or brown. Other diseases warrant one or two remedies, although migraine headaches receive a total of five. The forms of the remedies offered as cures comprise twenty-four ointments, fourteen plasters, twenty-five drinks, three lectuaries or soft sweetened medicines, four medicines to be taken in small doses, and three powders. Frequently, the same ingredients used in recipes for inks, sizing, colours (white, green, blue, red) are also found in cures for canker, fester, and other external lesions as well as for internal diseases that were perceived to derive from corrupted humours and biting poisons. Similarly, a charm to cure fevers requires the direct application of ink. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>In Part 2 of the manuscript, a scribe copied the first chapters of Henry Daniel's widely circulated <i>Dome of uryne</i> (ff. 28r-29v), which has been edited by M. Teresa Tavormina. The scribe elaborated the initial letter Ts with animal and human heads; these doodles are the only figural decoration in the whole manuscript. Whereas the rest of the manuscript's contents deal broadly with treatment, this text is the only one that addresses diagnosis, and specifically through urinoscopy. As the author explains, four elements belong to the 'dome of uryne' (i.e. the doom, or passing of judgement on, urine, from the Middle English verb 'domen'): the substance, colours, regions and contents. Is the substance thick or thin, or in between? If it is thin enough to see the joints of your fingers through it, Daniel wrote, 'that thynnes betokynneth a bad splene and a bad stomak and a watyr in the bowellys'. Thickness indicated a pain in the stomach, in the head and in the bowels, but somewhere in between indicated 'disease of the gall'. Of colour, Daniel explained that, 'as Masterys sayth', there were twenty possible colours of urine, and proceeded to describe these, beginning with the whitest, 'as clere watyr of the well'; unfortunately, the copy of the text preserved here ends imperfectly, part-way through the description of the sixteenth colour, which is 'as black wyne'. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>In Part 3, the Middle English treatise on wounds is a loose translation of excerpts taken from Book Two of Guglielmo da Saliceto's <i>Chirurgia</i>, which was written in late 13th-century Italy. The original Latin text describes how a surgeon should cleanse, suture, and treat piercing wounds caused by swords and arrows and the like with numerous recipes for cleansing, closing, and soothing. The Cambridge Middle English wounds treatise begins in the middle of a sentence (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(65);return false;'>30r</a>) in Book Two, Chapter Nine, on wounds to the arms and hands. It continues with excerpts from Chapters Twelve through Sixteen, covering (in order) wounds to the breast and ribs, back, mouth of the stomach (where the scribe adds a potion of Master William Holme, 'for men and wymen that weren woundid in the stomac' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(75);return false;'>35r-35v</a>)), the lower stomach and bowels, and finally the waist and the hips. Guglielmo's chapter numbers are not given, and the excerpts are arbitrary, but brief transitions in Latin mark the movement from one topic to another. A surgical operation and successful cure of a 'knight of Pavia' (Papia), 'Sire Johannes Deperdella', whom a 'master' named Octobonus considered untreatable, is described in as much or more detail in Middle English as in the Latin original (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(79);return false;'>37r-37v</a>).</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>An acephalous collection of about 350 recipes and charms in Middle English (with some Latin in the charms) extends from f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(83);return false;'>39r</a> to f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(156);return false;'>75v</a>. The charms largely correspond to those found in other 15th-century medical recipe collections that are prefaced by a Middle English poem that promises medicines 'to hele sores boþ olde and newe', and 'To hele alle sores þat arn curable / Of swerd knif and of arue / Be þe wounde wyd or narue / Of spere of quarel of dagger of dart' (see also <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-09308/15'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 9308</a>, f. 2r). This collection was copied by the same hand as the preceding treatise on wounds, and there is much here that addresses this same subject. There are directions for making the two cures named 'gracia dei', a salve or plaster for cleaning and healing wounds or ulcers. One, 'good for old sores and new', was used, it is claimed, by Lady Beauchamp, the wife of the earl of Warwick (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(113);return false;'>54r</a>). Another 'the erle of hertford [sic] vsyd that was held a noble surgyn' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(114);return false;'>54v</a>). There are also instructions for constructing a surgical dressing for an open wound: it uses a lead plate etched with five crosses, which was to be prayed over and conjured with a charm by the virtue of the wounds of Christ. A small diagram of the plate itself is included (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(140);return false;'>67v</a>; see also <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-EE-00001-00015/196'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.1.15</a>, f. 94v). </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Lea Olsan<br /> Emerita Professor, Department of English<br /> University of Louisiana at Monroe</p><p style='text-align: justify;'><b>References</b><div style='list-style-type: disc;'><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>Lea T. Olsan, 'The corpus of charms in the Middle English leechcraft remedy books', in <i>Charms, charmers and charming: international research on verbal magic', ed. by Jonathan Roper, Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 214-237</i></div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>Lea T. Olsan, '<i>Pigmenta</i>: materials for writing, painting and healing', in <i>Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science</i>, ed. by Stella Panayotova and Paola Ricciardi, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 2018), vol. 2, pp. 107-117</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'><i>The dome of uryne: a reading edition of nine Middle English uroscopies</i>, ed. by M. Teresa Tavormina (Oxford: University Press, 2019)</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>Steven J. Williams, <i>The Secret of Secrets: the scholarly career of a pseudo-Aristotelian text in the Latin Middle Ages</i> (Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press, 2003)</div></div><br /></p>