<p style='text-align: justify;'>The bulk of this manuscript comprises a copy of the <i>Lilium medicinae</i> of Bernard de Gordon, copied in the 14th century in southern France or northern Italy. It is accompanied by Walter Agilon's guide to dosages, <i>De dosibus medicinarum</i>, as well as an additional part of roughly contemporaneous but apparently separate manufacture, which contains the treatise on healing, <i>Summa de modo medendi</i>, of Gerard of Cremona/Gerard of Montpellier. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The proliferation of new medical writings and translations during the 12th and 13th centuries presented students and scholars with a problem: how to manage, let alone comprehend, an increasingly mountainous body of knowledge, and apply that effectively in their work. The <i>Lilium medicinae</i> was one attempt at a solution. Written at the University of Montpellier in 1304, this systematic, head-to-toe guide to illness encompassed both medical and surgical knowledge, and drew in material from both Arabic and European sources. It was intended as a learned guide to practical medicine. First, Bernard described a disease, then followed the Hippocratic tradition in explaining its cause ('Causa'), its diagnosis ('Signa'), its course ('Prognosticatio'), its possible treatments ('Curatio') and how the body could be cleared of the illness ('Clarificatio'). This logical, rational structure is reflected in the presentation of the text in this manuscript, aiding its navigation and its use by its readers. Each book begins with a large decorated initial and a table of contents. These headings are repeated at the beginning of each numbered chapter, where they have been rubricated in a variety of ways: either by being written in or struck through in red ink. Within each chapter, further rubricated headings subdivide the text according to the Hippocratic schema outlined above. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The usefulness of this arrangement to the medieval physician is illustrated by the addition of medical recipes to the margins by a succession of readers during the 14th and 15th centuries. Rather than haphazard or incidental insertions, these were placed in margins adjacent to passages in the main text that dealt with the same illnesses. Bernard's treatise thus provided a structure for readers to record and organise further medical knowledge that they had gained. In some instances, the sources of these recipes are cited: among them Arabic medical writers such as Avicenna and Razes, but also the herbal writer Macer (Odo of Meung), the surgeon Lanfranc of Milan, the Salernitan compilation of medical simples known as the 'Circa instans', and in several places someone called 'Gilbert'. This may be the writer known as Gilbertus Anglicus, who produced his own encyclopaedic compilation of medical treatments, the <i>Compendium medicinae</i>. This was one of the longest medical texts in Latin and perhaps the first such survey following the arrival of Greek and Arabic texts in Latin translations. Whereas Bernard organised his work from head to toe, however, Gilbertus opted to arrange his according to the body's systems: the brain, senses, breathing, digestion, fluids (blood and humours) and reproductive organs. Little is known about Gilbertus's life and it is not known where he studied or taught. That Montpellier is one possibility is suggested by Gilbertus's composition of a commentary on a uroscopy treatise by another scholar of that university, Gilles de Corbeil. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr James Freeman<br />Medieval Manuscripts Specialist<br />Cambridge University Library</p>
