Western Medieval Manuscripts : Medical recipes and charms for horses

Western Medieval Manuscripts

While most remedy collections that survive from the late Middle Ages provide ailments for human conditions (for instance, <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-09308/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 9308</a>), a small but significant number focused on cures for horses, reflecting the importance of these animals at the time. This manuscript is a composite of several texts largely made up of remedies intended for horses but with a small number of cures for human illnesses and other procedures in the later sections. Contemporary horse-care (or hippiatric) treatises – such as the famous On Medicines for Horses by Jordanus Ruffus – often included advice for horse owners on breeding, stabling, and training horses, however, this collection exclusively contains remedies and other materials relating to illnesses or adverse conditions. This likely reflects that it was intended for horse-doctors rather than stablemasters. This manuscript was principally written in Middle English with some French and Latin mainly in the names of conditions and in the charms and prayers. The first and largest component of this manuscript is a section of the relatively common Boke of Marchalsi, a fifteenth-century horse-medicine treatise in Middle English (other examples include <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rs9qgwh8'>London, Wellcome Library, MS 5650</a>, ff. 1r-28v). 'Marshalsi' was the practice associated with 'marshals', a professional class that arose in the later Middle Ages and provided prophylactic and interventionary veterinary care as well as shoeing horses. The Boke of Marchalsi was set out as a conversation between a master and their apprentice. This structure provided the author with opportunities to explain particular points of pharmacy and medicine as they relate to horse-care such as explaining why a disease is more likely to afflict one side of a horse's face than the other (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>2r</a>) or to explain and justify particular remedies that at first glance seem contradictory (e.g. 'Master, why should you give the horse either vinegar or milk, given that one is sour and the other sweet?': f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(27);return false;'>11r</a>). The first component of this manuscript follows a rough head-to-hoof organisation mirroring the head-to-toe schema that was common in contemporary remedy collections. The rest of the manuscript is made up of several shorter collections of remedies mainly intended for horses, and contains cures attributed to several named marshals including William, marshal of Merton Priory in Surrey, Piers 'the Moor', and 'Hew Saracyn of Spayne' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(39);return false;'>19r</a>). Horses were an important international commodity in late-medieval England, and many were imported from Spain for royal and seigneurial stables. It was also not unusual for stablemasters from France and Spain to be employed by English aristocrats, so it is quite possible that Piers and Hew lived and worked in England or that their knowledge and practices were transmitted along international trade routes. Although this manuscript makes no direct reference to contemporary European horse-medicine writers, it does refer to the 'great marshals' and a disease which they called 'pynconeys' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(48);return false;'>23v</a>). This is likely a rendering of 'malum pinsanese', a condition found in the Latin works of Jordanus Ruffus, Laurentius Rusius and other influential late-medieval writers of horse-medicine treatises and so suggests that the authors of this manuscript were familiar with the wider world of veterinary medicine.This collection includes remedies targeting a range of conditions: notably contagious diseases such as glanders (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(11);return false;'>3r</a>) and farcy (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(16);return false;'>5v-8v</a>), wounds and bleeding (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(38);return false;'>18v</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(46);return false;'>22v</a>), and diseases of the eye (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>2r-2v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(37);return false;'>18r</a>), the face (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(30);return false;'>12v</a>), mouth and tongue (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(12);return false;'>3v-5r</a>). There is a particular focus on injuries and conditions of the feet and legs (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(28);return false;'>11v-14r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(39);return false;'>19r-19v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(46);return false;'>22v</a>) reflecting how vulnerable a horse was to these sorts of ailments during its working life. This manuscript also contains remedies which reflect the working demands placed on horses, for instance procedures which corrected errors in a horse's gait (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(49);return false;'>24r-24v</a>) or issues with a horse's behaviour (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(45);return false;'>22r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(51);return false;'>25r</a>). There are also procedures which aided a marshal or horse-keeper in their work, for instance advice on judging a horse's virtues (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(28);return false;'>11v</a>), methods for making vinegar for medicines (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(34);return false;'>14v-15r</a>), and charms to make a horse stand still whilst it is being cared for or shod (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(52);return false;'>25v-26r</a>). As well as veterinary procedures, the latter parts of this manuscript also include remedies for human ailments, reflecting the fact that veterinary and medical healing practices were not strictly separated in this period. These medical remedies offer cures for a range of ailments such as sciatica (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(66);return false;'>33v</a>), toothache (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(67);return false;'>34r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(71);return false;'>37r</a>), migraine (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(68);return false;'>34v</a>), and childbirth (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(70);return false;'>35v</a>). There are also non-medical instructions, such as an apotropaic procedure to protect a house from fire that involves placing a written talisman high up in the rafters of the building (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(70);return false;'>35v</a>). The breadth of remedies and rituals found in this manuscript is a relatively common feature of late-medieval remedy collections which tended to attract an admixture of additional procedures, reflecting the needs or interests of the collections' writers and owners. The veterinary procedures in this collection range from pharmacy, blood-letting and surgical interventions to rituals involving charms, prayers, and talismans. This is again reflective of the breadth of healing techniques employed in the late Middle Ages, in which magical and religious healing were equally valued alongside medical or surgical practices. This manuscript includes a particularly interesting set of veterinary rituals, which are indicated for a variety of conditions, notably a group of diseases referred to as farcy, glanders, or more generally 'the worm'. These were dangerous and highly contagious illnesses which could decimate a herd and as such were particularly feared by medieval horse-doctors and stablemasters. The rituals and charms in this manuscript range in complexity from a few simple words or a short prayer to procedures with multiple stages, prayers, magical incantations, and written talismans. Charms and prayers often invoked saints and Biblical figures or narratives that were perceived as having a particular relevance to the disease or condition under treatment. For instance, there are ritual remedies against farcy or the worm which use the figure of St Job (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(54);return false;'>26v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(61);return false;'>31r</a>) who was assaulted by worms as part of his trials, and charms against bleeding which invoke the figure of Longinus, the centurion who according to legend pierced Jesus's side with a lance at the crucifixion (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(53);return false;'>26r-26v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(63);return false;'>32r</a>). This manuscript also features a set of unusual rituals that were intended to aid a horse afflicted by farcy, which involved preparing a talisman or magical object and then attaching it to the horse with sutures. In one ritual the reader is instructed to write magical words and symbols on a lead token and place it under the skin of the horse's forehead (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(69);return false;'>35r</a>). In another, the object is made from the roots of red nettle and red dock twisted together into a cross and tied to crosses made of leather and lead. These three crosses were perhaps intended to reflect the Trinity or the three crosses at Calvary. The reader is then instructed to stitch this object to their horse, 'just as Christ joined His precious body to the cross' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(17);return false;'>6r</a>). This type of procedure appears to be peculiar to remedies against contagious diseases in horses (for other examples, see, <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rs9qgwh8'>London, Wellcome Library, MS 5650</a>, ff. 14v-16r and London, British Library, MS Harley 6398, ff. 28v –29v). Like many charms and magical healing rituals from this period, it relied on the performer creating an analogical relationship between the patient (in this case a horse) and a powerful Biblical narrative of redemption and resurrection. Dr Sunny Harrison Associate Lecturer Open University