Medieval Medical Recipes : Medical recipes

Medieval Medical Recipes

There are numerous challenges to the systematic study of medieval medical recipe texts. They are almost always anonymous, with generic titles that typically specify only the illness to be cured. They are often very short – rarely more than half a dozen sentences – and highly mutable, with slight variations in the ingredients, quantities, instructions or prescriptions that are revealed only through close textual comparison. The traditional method of cataloguing texts – by recording rubrics, incipits and explicits – is thus of limited use, since it is unlikely to enable their connection to a known author or text and might furthermore disguise important differences between manuscript witnesses of the 'same' recipe. The variability of the collections in which medical recipes are found also make problematic any attempt at editing them as group. The digitisation and cataloguing of manuscripts containing medical recipes across fourteen library collections in Cambridge by the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries project aims to address some of these challenges. It is facilitating researchers' access to the manuscripts in which these important texts are found, and revealing the intellectual and material contexts in which recipes were recorded and transmitted: cataloguing describes which texts are found alongside them, while the digitisation shows where and in what way the recipes were copied in manuscripts, and how they were organised or arranged on the page. This information all provides useful clues towards our understanding of the reading and reception of this form of medical knowledge in late medieval England. The value of such an approach is illustrated by this example from Emmanuel College. The loss of several leaves, perhaps a whole quire, from the beginning of this manuscript disguises the fact that it contains much the same compilation of medical recipes and charms that is found in five other manuscripts covered by the project: <ul><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-09308/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 9308</a></li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-09309/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 9309</a></li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DD-00006-00029/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.6.29</a> (ff. 34r-)</li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-SJC-E-00006/1'>Cambridge, St John's College, MS E.6</a> (ff. 96r-)</li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/O.1.13'>Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.13</a> (ff. 46r- and 166r-)</li></ul> Furthermore, with the exception of the Trinity College manuscript, none of these is recorded in the Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500 (vol. 10, p. 3839 [264]) (MS Add. 9308 and two manuscripts from collections outside were subsequently noted by George Keiser (2003)). Making further such identifications has perhaps been hampered by the limited availability of the text in print, with only one edition having been published, by Fritz Heinrich in 1896, from a single manuscript witness: London, British Library, Add. MS 33996.The text in Emmanuel MS 95 opens part-way through what we know from these other manuscripts to be a cure for the stone, and continues on the same page with treatments for other genito-urinary complaints: blood in one's urine, difficulty in passing urine, swollen testicles, and 'apysgalle' or 'scalding' of the penis (probably a urinary tract infection or symptom of venereal disease). The prescriptions for these terribly uncomfortable ailments are, except for minor variations of wording, all but identical to one another across this group of manuscripts – and where the leaves of one have been damaged, we are able infer with reasonable confidence what the missing text might have been from other examples. 'For man þat pyssyt blode', a handful each of ambrose and sanguinary and half a handful of parsley seed were to be crushed and tempered with goat's milk and given to the sufferer to drink. A similar concotion was prescribed 'For man þat may nat wele pysse', using the herbs rue, gromwell and parsley, crushed and tempered with white wine, and served warm. To cure swollen testicles, powdered cumin, barleymeal and honey are fried together; from this, a plaster is made, which is kept luke warm and bound around the sore area. For the last of this group, a linen cloth should be cleaned, burned and ground into a powder and mixed with 'oyle of eggys': the sore should be anointed with this, and the powder put in the sore holes. On further examination, however, there are differences between these compilations that point to a more complex history of textual transmission that still awaits detailed study and analysis. For instance, St John's MS E.6 omits the cures for blood in the urine and swollen testicles, but includes an extra cure for 'skaldidd pyntill' that involves cooking mallows and mercury with 'a mese of pork' (probably minced) and making from that a pottage that the sick should eat, served with white wine. The first set of recipes in Trinity MS O.1.13 gives only the first two before moving on to remedies for 'wildfire', dry cough and the white or black morphews; four cures for swollen testicles appear a few pages later (f. 49r), of which the third is the closest match but with several changes: the same quantity of wormwood, 'bene mele' and powdered cumin are tempered with white wine and fried to make a plaster, which was to be applied warm. Apparently, this formulation had a more general purpose application, since 'it is good for alle wykkyd humours of ballokkis'. A cure for the final ailment is omitted altogether from this set of recipes in this manuscript. The recipes continue in Emmanuel MS 95 with cures for aching or swelling in the thighs or feet, for aching or swelling in the legs or feet, and two for feet that have become swollen through travelling (one using mugwort fried in boar's grease to make a plaster, the other using cumin instead of mugwort with the addition of olive oil for frying). Only in CUL MS Dd.6.29 are all four presented in the same order. In CUL MS Add. 9309, the cure for legs and feet is entitled 'For all manere swellyng'. The sequence is interrupted after that by a treatment 'For him þat hath ache oþer swellyng in his brayn', which is out of place in a section dealing with the lower half of the body. In the second set of recipes in Trinity MS O.1.13, the first remedy is omitted, whereas in CUL MS Add. 9308 it is the second, and where the last two for swollen feet are given instead under the heading for aching or swelling in the legs or feet. Only the mugwort cure for swollen feet is found in St John's MS E.6. Altogether different remedies for aches and swellings in the legs or feet are found in the first set of recipes in Trinity MS O.1.13, not after the first genito-urinary cures but later, below the four treatments for swollen testicles. These compilations of Middle English recipes are also found in varying manuscript contexts. Perhaps the most similar in terms of script and layout to Emmanuel MS 95 are CUL MS Add. 9309 and Trinity MS O.1.13 (first set): both are written on paper in cursive scripts of variable neatness, with a fluctuating number of lines on each page. In Trinity MS O.1.13, the rubrics are a simply underlined, whereas slightly more formal display scripts are used for the rubrics in CUL MS Add. 9308 and Emmanuel MS 95 (where they are also underlined in red). The second set in Trinity MS O.1.13 is also written on paper, but frame ruling and greater scribal care resulted in a more regular layout, and a semi-formal Anglicana script was used for the text and rubrics alike, the latter marked by a paraph and underlining, both in red. The production of CUL MS Add. 9308 and CUL MS Dd.6.29 is more polished, and was probably executed by professional craftsmen. Each page is ruled with a consistent layout, the formal scripts Anglicana formata in the former and textura in the latter are used for copying the text, and decorated initials mark the beginning of each recipe; the first of these in CUL MS Dd.6.29 is even in gold leaf. MS Add. 9308 is the smallest, St John's MS E.6 and Emmanuel MS 95 being slightly larger but both about the same size as each other, and CUL MS Add. 9309 and then CUL MS Dd.6.29 each larger than the previous. Trinity MS O.1.13 is taller than the largest of these, but narrower. These differences notwithstanding, the recipes are in each manuscript presented in small and portable formats. Setting aside the other, later additions to Emmanuel MS 95 (catalogued here as Parts 1 and 3), it appears to have been made as a standalone compilation of medical recipes - like CUL MS Add. 9308 and 9309. So, too, may have been those found in CUL MS Dd.6.29 and Trinity MS O.1.13, however these were evidently soon integrated into more wide-ranging compilations. The inclusion in both manuscripts of a number of urinoscopy texts as well as some elements of astrological medicine resembles the combination of such material in the folding almanacs that were being produced around the same time, and suggests a possibly more learned readership for this collection of recipes. The outlier in the group – and the only one for which we have identifiable medieval provenance – is St John's MS E.6, which was compiled by Thomas Betson (d. 1516), a university educated lawyer and priest who later entered Syon Abbey as a Bridgettine monk. Its contents reflect Betson's wide range of intellectual interests: medical, but also herbal, chemical, legal, poetic and devotional. His collection of recipes is the most selective of this set, copied by his own hand in his commonplace book. He may have had access to an exemplar preserving only part of the collection seen in these other manuscripts, or made a selection from it based on his own preferences and expertise, but either way it confirms that vernacular recipes were of interest to learned, Latinate readerships as well as to practitioners of the healing arts for whom Middle English provided invaluable access to medical knowledge. Evidently, the contents of these manuscipts continued to be valued into the 16th century and beyond. Bound into Emmanuel MS 95 at the end are four bifolia and a quire of eight leaves, all of paper. Onto the first leaves, a later owner of the manuscript added a table of contents for the preceding recipes - evidently made after the loss of the leaves at the beginning of the manuscript, since it opens with the cure for blood in the urine. The compiler used a simple substitution cipher for words he considered taboo (for another instance of this phenomenon, see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DD-00006-00009/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.6.9</a>). Further recipes have then been added by several hands. Where one or more these owners may have lived is suggested by a sheet of paper from an account book - presumably added as an endleaf when the other material was bound in - which refers to places near Peterborough and Cambridge.Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library Bibliography:<ul><li>Ein mittelenglisches Medizinbuch, ed. by Fritz Heinrich (Halle: Niemeyer, 1896)</li><li>George R. Keiser, 'Verse introductions to Middle English medical treatises', English Studies 84, 301-317</li></ul>