Medieval Medical Recipes : John Arderne, Liber receptorum medicinalium

Medieval Medical Recipes

The principal contents of this manuscript are the writings of the English surgeon John Arderne (1307/08-c. 1380). He wrote in Latin and the writings seem to date from c. 1370 to 1376. Four separate Middle English translations of his works made in the 15th century are also extant but Latin manuscripts are more commonly found (more than 40) before 1500, making Arderne one of the most popular medieval medical authors in England (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GONVILLE-AND-CAIUS-00190-00223/15'>Cambridge, Gonville and Caius MS 190/223</a>, ff. 7r-, for another Arderne manuscript). Arderne's writings usually take up the greater part of these Latin manuscripts, although not always in the same order. The best known of his works is the Practica of fistula in ano, a treatise on different forms of operation to treat fistulae and similar ailments affecting the backside and male genitals. In Trinity MS O.2.49 this work is found on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(81);return false;'>35r-59r</a>. Another identifiable Arderne text is called Extracta emoroidarum ('Extracts on haemorrhoids', drawn from authors and texts listed at the start), and in this manuscript the text runs from f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(137);return false;'>63r</a> to f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(157);return false;'>73r</a>. Other texts are harder to identify clearly, though there are extended passages on administering enemas, on eye diseases, and on ailments of the womb, for example. It has been convenient since the early 20th-century studies of D'Arcy Power to characterise these as belonging to a Liber medicinarum sive receptorum liber medicinalium ('Book of medicines or book of medical recipes'), though this is not a title found in Arderne's writings. Power's title does convey that most of what is found on ff. 1r-35r, 59r-63r, and 73r-82r consists of the medicinal virtues of herbs, compound medicines and recipes for a variety of ailments, not all of them surgical. Many other recipes of the same kind are also to be found in the Practica and in the Extracta emoroidarum. There are charms and rituals interspersed with Arderne's recipes, as for example on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(13);return false;'>1r</a>, where an experimentum to stop the flow of blood is a ritual using a split hazel rod. Some recipes, probably not authored by Arderne, are written in Middle English (see f. 1r again). Case histories of treatment are found scattered amongst Arderne's recipes and sometimes his patients are named (particularly in the Practica). Arderne manuscripts are usually accompanied by a programme of images in the margins of the text and this is true of Trinity MS O.2.49. In some deluxe manuscripts these are illuminated, but not here, where the images are hand drawn by the scribe. The subjects include herbs, injuries, bandages and instruments, and these images are often referred to by Arderne within the text. There are also diagrams of winds and humours, and a crude Zodiac Man preceded by a table of lunar days and zodiac signs. These are inserted within the text (on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(13);return false;'>1r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(143);return false;'>66r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(98);return false;'>43v-44r</a> respectively). There are also larger pictures of instruments and stages of the operation for fistula in ano (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(91);return false;'>40r-40v</a>). The other principal text in Trinity MS O.2.49 is anonymous and is titled Salus pauperum infirmorum vel adiutorium salutis ('Health of the sick poor or aid to health'). It begins with a liturgical prayer invoking God who has given medicine for men's help, and proceeds with recipes for ailments of the body from the head downwards. It ends with remedies for wounds of the limbs. On f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(205);return false;'>97r</a> there is a charm for spasm requiring names to be written on parchment and hung about the neck. The same charm is found in Arderne and the Salus pauperum has many remedies that might easily have come from his writings. Following the Salus pauperum are miscellaneous remedies including several for pestilence. On f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(209);return false;'>99r-99v</a>, there is a brief text by Walter Agilon, De pulsibus ('On pulses'), copied by the same scribe as before, who ends his text with 'Explicit de pulsibus quod Grene 1451'. In or about 1451 is therefore likely to be the date for the entire manuscript up to this point, and Grene seems to have been the main scribe. At the end of the manuscript is an incomplete and disordered index to the remedies in the text in a 17th-century hand. On the flyleaves preceding the Arderne writings are various recipes, notes and diagrams, which were added to the manuscript by owners later in the 15th or early 16th centuries. Some are in English. On f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(1);return false;'>[ii recto]</a>, there are instructions for masses and almsgiving during a week for a soul in Purgatory by pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux, followed by a later charm for cramp. On fol. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(1);return false;'>[iii verso]</a> there is a branching diagram in Latin differentiating kinds of disease, beginning with those affecting the whole body and ending with those affecting distinct parts of the body. Peter Murray Jones Fellow of King's College, Cambridge References<div style='list-style-type: disc;'><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>P.M. Jones, 'John of Arderne and the Mediterranean tradition of scholastic surgery', in Practical medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. by L. Garcia-Ballester, R. French, J. Arrizabalaga and A. Cunningham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 289-321</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>D'A. Power, Treatises of fistula in ono, haemorrhoids and clysters by John Arderne, Early English Text Society, o.s. 139 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1910)</div></div>