Gonville and Caius College : Medical tracts and recipes

Gonville and Caius College

This manuscript contains a large collection of Middle English and Latin medical recipes, alongside alchemical and craft preparations, charms and magic tricks, all copied by numerous hands of the late 15th and first half of the 16th century. Unfortunately, a key piece of evidence for our understanding of how and in what order the manuscript was produced is not available. The current binding is so tight that the physical evidence of quire divisions - specifically, sewing at the centre of the quires - is not visible. Secondary evidence such as leaf signatures or catchwords is not available, either: these may have been lost to trimming or damage, or were never used. The placement on adjacent leaves of two apparent catchwords (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(32);return false;'>13v</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(34);return false;'>14v</a>) casts doubt on whether either indicates a quire division. Quires made of paper tend also to be larger than those of parchment, which are usually formed of six, eight, ten, twelve or fourteen leaves. It is thus harder to spot where one quire might end and another begin simply by counting forwards from a likely starting-point, such as where a text commences at the top of the page. It appears, though, that two paper stocks were used, the change occuring at ff. 67-68. With the aid of specialist imaging techniques, it might in theory be possible to reveal the location of every watermark and thereby identify symmetrical patterns in their occurrence and thus the structure of the quires, but this remains out of scope for ordinary digitisation programmes. However, similarities in scribal hand and presentational choices allow us at least to identify a number of sections within the manuscript: a core set of texts, perhaps, produced at the same time and around which further additions then coalesced. The first of these is a variant version of a cosmological treatise known as The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy, interpolated with The Book of Ypocras (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(31);return false;'>13r-17r</a>), and followed by a treatise on the correspondence between signs of the zodiac and certain illnesses (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(39);return false;'>17r-17v</a>), and a collection of medical recipes spuriously attributed to Aristotle that begins with ailments of the head but proceeds in no particular order (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(41);return false;'>18r-21r</a>). A few leaves later, there continues a treatise on the virtues of various herbs (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(49);return false;'>22r-25r</a>), and then a sequence of collections of medical remedies by genre: drinks (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(57);return false;'>26r-27v</a>), powders (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(63);return false;'>29r-30r</a>), electuaries (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(67);return false;'>31r-32r</a>), syrups (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(70);return false;'>32v-33r</a>), plasters (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(74);return false;'>34v-37v</a>), ointments, unguents, 'entretes' and salves (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(82);return false;'>38v-44r</a>), and ointments used in surgery spuriously attributed to Galen (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(93);return false;'>44r-44v</a>). A short tract on surgery and list of medicinal waters, oils and unguents intervene on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(73);return false;'>34r</a>. In each of these, the scribe has used a distinctive display script for headings, broadly akin to Anglicana Formata but including letter forms drawn from Secretary script, which are sometimes also rubricated by underlining in red. The text meanwhile is copied consistently in a cursive Secretary script. These are the only parts of the manuscript, moreover, which contain painted decoration of any kind: simple, plain initials in red at the beginning of each section. There are further, though less obvious, sections in the manuscript, copied by other hands. One immediately following those described above contains texts on healthy living throughout the year (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(97);return false;'>46r-46v</a>), the humours (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(98);return false;'>46v-47r</a>), an extract on physiognomy from the Secretum Secretorum (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(99);return false;'>47r-50r</a>), and a series of prognosticatory texts and others on bloodletting, the planets, the humours, and urines (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(105);return false;'>50r-60v</a>) - all apparently copied by a scribe named 'Whyston', who signed his name at the end. Later in the manuscript, on leaves provided only with frame ruling, another hand has copied a prose lunary text (its litterae notabiliores ornamented with dots), further prognosticatory texts, and the Book of Ypocras (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(143);return false;'>68r-78v</a>). A final hand (not obviously the same) has copied some astrological texts after this (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(167);return false;'>79r-83v</a>).Many other hands then made further additions to the manuscript, in the blank spaces and on the blank leaves between these texts. Most of these are medical recipes, but there are also ten medical charms, dealing with fevers (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(12);return false;'>3v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(13);return false;'>4r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(22);return false;'>8v</a>), toothache (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(14);return false;'>4v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(135);return false;'>64r</a>), bleeding wounds (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(14);return false;'>4v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(21);return false;'>8r</a> (twice)), hallucinations and evil spirits (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(15);return false;'>5r</a>) and migraine (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(181);return false;'>86r</a>). The very first item in the manuscript is a further charm 'to gather rats and drive them from a place' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(8);return false;'>1v</a>). The ailments addressed by the medieval remedies are seemingly miscellaneous, and the texts presented in no apparent order but simply as chance and available space dictated. One for a 'principall water to clere þe syth of eyȝen' is notable for its reference to spectacles: it claims that a man treated this way was able to discard his 'spectakelys' after having worn them for seven years. Both the charms and the medical recipes among which they are interspersed are all fairly close in date to the initial productions discussed above: that is, from the late 15th and early 16th century or thereabouts. However, other additions attest to a longer history of use. A hand of the later 16th century added a declaration at the end, explaining why 'Thys boke off medesynes ys veri necessary and profytabull for seche as be languente [i.e. ill] or dolent [in pain], for they [the medicines] haue ben persuaded and proued uppon pascyons that haue bene Restored too Confortabull state of body'. In a couple of places, further pieces of paper were added to the manuscript (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(133);return false;'>[63a] and [63b]</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(157);return false;'>[74a]</a>) that also bear medical recipes, but copied in a hand of the 17th century. Several names have been written into the manuscript by roughly contemporary hands: 'Grymston' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(11);return false;'>3r</a>), 'Thomas Sowman of Raylegthe' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(177);return false;'>84r</a>), 'James Hyll' and 'John Whyte' (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(182);return false;'>86v</a>). None has yet been identified. Some clues as to the sort of person who might have owned this manuscript lie in its contents. Medical recipes could be organised by a number of systems or none at all; most commonly, they occur in head to toe order, and less often in alphabetical order by disease or according to the different systems of the body. Their arrangement by category of medicine is more unusual. Across the corpus of manuscripts covered by the Curious Cures project, only one other contains such groupings: <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-TRINITY-COLLEGE-O-00009-00032/1'>Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.9.32</a>. There one finds lists of common preparations such as pills and clysters, tisanes, balms, oils, plasters and unguents, but also repercussives, resolvatives, mollificatives, maturatives, spasmadraps, incarnatives, dessicatives and caustics. These latter medicaments were specifically concerned with the healing of wounds and the removal and repair of damaged flesh: particular specialisms of medieval surgeons. Among the medicinal collections and added medical recipes in Gonville and Caius MS 457/395, there are likewise frequent references to afflictions the surgeon was tasked with addressing: the treatment of sores, swellings, cankers and bruises, to removing dead flesh and encouraging new flesh to grow, to cleansing and healing wounds, to stopping bleeding, and to dealing with broken and dislocated bones. There are also occasional references to the materia medica mentioned in Trinity MS O.9.32, such as maturatives (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(77);return false;'>36r</a>), mundificatives (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(79);return false;'>37r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(92);return false;'>43v</a>), salves (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(93);return false;'>44r</a>), powders for wounds or to remove dead flesh (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(65);return false;'>30r</a>), ointments for all manner of wounds (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(83);return false;'>39r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(89);return false;'>42r</a>), plasters to deal with broken bones (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(48);return false;'>21v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(79);return false;'>37r</a>) and unguents for helping broken bones to knit (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(89);return false;'>42r</a>). There are also short treatises on surgery (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(73);return false;'>34r</a>) and ointments used (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(93);return false;'>44r-44v</a>), as well as a warning against letting women see wounds sustained in battle (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(93);return false;'>44r</a>). Other texts bear witness to intellectual interests beyond surgical treatment and simple remedies, however: tracts on the principles of humoural medicine, astrological medicine and uroscopy, or forecasting the future according to the occurrence of thunder or when New Year's Day or Christmas Day fall. Any attempt to label this manuscript simply as a surgeon's manual and commonplace book is thus resisted by the varied nature of its contents. Besides medical recipes, there are also clusters of other short, instructional texts, such as a handful of alchemical or craft preparations: for making ink (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(10);return false;'>2v-3r</a>), poisoning birds (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(15);return false;'>5r</a>), or gilding (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(18);return false;'>6v</a>). A further entry on how to write in ink with only water in your pen (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(18);return false;'>6v</a>), while drawing on alchemical knowledge, seems more like a clever trick to astonish or amuse one's friends. Indeed, there is also a cluster of texts of practical magic on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(140);return false;'>66v</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(142);return false;'>67v</a> that testify to the imagination and humour, anxieties and preoccupations of late medieval readers. There are instructions on how to make fish swim into your hands, or make a horse seem dead and then bring him to life again, how to stop dogs barking at you or make them follow you, how to win every game or overcome your enemies, drive flies out of your house, identify a thief, or create the illusion of a hare or other animals running through your house. These place the manuscript or its readers outdoors or in domestic spaces other than a patient's bedside. For the heartsick reader, there was also advice 'ad habendum amorem puelle', i.e. how to make a girl fall in love with you: one should take the blood from a white cockerel and write your name and the girl's name with it on a vine leaf, then 'touch her with the leaf and she will love you'. One wonders how many unsuspecting girls were brushed with such vine leaves by hopeful suitors - and whether it was believed to work for as well as on women. Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library