Medieval Medical Recipes : Medical tracts, recipes, and charms

Medieval Medical Recipes

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Comprising several parts of separate production, each written in cursive scripts by late medieval hands, and assembled into a composite volume of complex structure by an early modern collector, this manuscript yields its information only to the most persistent researchers. When M.R. James came to describe the manuscript in 1902, he spent two pages of his catalogue listing the contents increasingly briefly, defeated perhaps by its complexities and its 'many hands, none very good', and ultimately dismissed the entire final section as 'receipts and miscellaneous notes, save at the end in a hand like that of Dr See [<i>sic</i>, for 'Dee']' (ff. 238-302). The Librarian of Trinity College, W.W. Greg, had similar difficulties, describing ff. 1-82 as simply 'a rough collection of tracts, verses, and receipts, of a medical character and rather confused', written 'mostly in a good plain hand'. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>As James and Greg observed, Trinity College MS O.1.13 is devoted mainly to medical recipes and treatments, but, because of the nature of its production and the challenge its contents present, it has not received the level of scholarly attention that other manuscripts have attracted. This is partly due to persistent aesthetic biases, which Elaine Treharne detected in manuscript studies. Scientific and medical manuscripts are not usually known for their visual appeal, in terms either of illumination or of script. In consequence, they are generally described in negative terms, catalogued haphazardly, and edited infrequently. A further obstacle is that many are at once composite volumes and miscellanies. Composites comprise two or often more parts of different origins and dates of production, which may have been assembled in stages by different owners, and potentially long after the individual parts had been made. The reasons for their assembly are not always apparent, and therefore it can be difficult to capture effectively the spirit or purpose of the volume as a whole. The miscellaneous contents - of the individual parts, and of the whole - are in turn difficult to navigate. As Arthur Bahr observed, a miscellany is 'a complex assemblage of textual parts that does not obligingly present readers with a clear program or straightforward purpose'. This certainly rings true for scientific and medical texts, and for MS O.1.13 specifically: it does not stand out visually, it is a materially complex assemblage of at least ten parts, and its miscellaneous contents resist easy identification and classification.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>There is, however, much to appreciate about this manuscript: a veritable treasure trove of largely unedited texts, each awaiting the attention of researchers. There are more than 600 pages crammed full of medical, culinary and alchemical recipes, and medical, herbal, horticultural and uroscopic treatises, and some miscellaneous writings as well. The recipe collections reveal the captivating realm of medieval medicine, and the intriguing aetiology of diseases: tooth decay described as being caused by worms, and the need for a remedy 'ffor any qwyke thynge that is cropyn into a mannys ere' (f. 70r). These texts feature a blend of human and veterinary medicine; of diagnostic, preventative and curative medicine; of recipes, charms, prognostication and divination; of remedies for both physical and spiritual, natural and supernatural complaints. The medical recipes in particular utilise an array of powders, syrups, pastes, treacles, baths, herbs, potions, salves, waters, poultices, purgations, plasters, ointments, juices, oils, prayers and incantations to treat pains, aches, fevers, fractures, stones, worms, wounds, coughs, palsies, swellings, fluxes, sores, incontinence, dropsy, gout, bleeding, baldness, insomnia, speechlessness, epilepsy, pestilence and necrosis, among many others. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The new description of the manuscript's contents, presented here by Clarck Drieshen, is so comprehensive that it marks a significant improvement on early descriptions such as M.R. James's, and even upon more recent, outstanding work such as by Linne Mooney for the Index of Middle English Prose. The textual units are identified in detail and in collections of short texts (such as the recipe collections) stand-out items have been described separately, especially those that appear incongruous in the immediate context. Thus, many of the charms and magical items in the medical recipe collections have been identified, to which may be added two strange remedies in the recipe collection on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(297);return false;'>145r-154v</a>. This collection is a series of short recipes on a variety of common complaints, but on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(317);return false;'>151c recto</a> matters take a sinister turn. Among the recipes on this page, one is 'for a blaste of a wykked spyryt', which the recipe asserts manifests as a physical swelling in the face, and the next recipe is 'ffor the fyr of hell', which is a type of skin inflammation sometimes identified as erysipelas. What these two recipes have in common with charms and magical recipes is that they connect the natural and supernatural realms. Charms and magical recipes often remedy complaints with a natural aetiology by supernatural means, whereas the two recipes on f. 151c recto seem to remedy complaints with a supernatural aetiology by natural means. Presuming supernatural causes or prescribing supernatural cures stands out to us, because the supernatural is now not usually associated with medicine. Yet in medieval medical contexts, the natural and the supernatural were not categorically separate, although it is not uncommon for charms in medieval recipe collections to have been censored by later readers, in particular by religious reformers of the 16th century.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Many of the texts in MS O.1.13 circulated widely in the late medieval period, as the indices of Middle English writings by George Keiser and Linne Mooney demonstrate. The treatises on rosemary, some of the recipe collections, the poem on leechcraft, the lunaries, the poem on phlebotomy, the zodiacal texts and the horticultural treatises are attested in ca. 15-25 manuscripts, suggesting that the scribes of what was to become MS O.1.13 drew on an accepted body of scientific and medical learning. With so many text witnesses and scientific and medical manuscripts, it becomes possible to identify clusters of late medieval scientific and medical sources that were produced under similar conditions, as Linda Voigts did for the so-called 'Sloane Group' of manuscripts (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-TRINITY-COLLEGE-O-00001-00077/1'>Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.77</a> for one such textual cluster from this group). Some parts of MS O.1.13 may likewise be connected to other manuscripts, through two potential clusters. The first consists of a poem on phlebotomy or bloodletting, days of the moon good or not good for bloodletting, thirty-two perilous days and prognostications for weather based on the appearance of the moon and sky (ff. 20r-21r). London, British Library, Sloane MS 963, ff. 71r-73v, has an identical cluster, in the same order, in the same words, in the same script and in a contemporary hand. A connection between MS O.1.13 and Sloane MS 963 is further corroborated by a second cluster, consisting of a tract on the four humours and the method for interpreting dreams using a psalter (f. 23r). Humoral lore and dream divination is not exactly an obvious pairing of texts, yet an identical cluster of texts occurs twice in Sloane MS 963, ff. 13r-13v and 55r-55v. This particular version of the method for interpreting dreams occurs only in the first part of MS O.1.13 and Sloane MS 963, which makes a connection between the two manuscripts even more likely. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr László Sándor Chardonnens<br /> Senior lecturer, Radboud Institute for Culture and History<br /> Radboud University</p><p style='text-align: justify;'><b>References</b><div style='list-style-type: disc;'><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>A. Bahr, 'Miscellaneity and Variance in the Medieval Book', in <i>The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches</i>, ed. by M. Johnston and M. Van Dussen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 181-98</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>W.W. Greg, <i>Catalogue of Manuscripts written in English to the Year 1500 in Trinity College of Cambridge</i> (1939)</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>M.R. James, <i>The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue</i>, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902).</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>G.R. Keiser, <i>Works of Science and Information. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500</i>, vol. 10 (New Haven: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998)</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>L.R. Mooney, <i>Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge</i>, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist 11 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995)</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>E.M. Treharne, 'The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Old English Manuscripts and their Physical Description', in <i>The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A.N. Doane</i>, ed. by M.T. Hussey and J.D. Niles (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 261-83</div><div style='display: list-item; margin-left: 20px;'>L.E. Voigts, 'The "Sloane Group": Related Scientific and Medical Manuscripts from the Fifteenth Century in the Sloane Collection', <i>British Library Journal</i> 16 (1990), 26-57</div></div><br /></p>