{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,14]],"date-time":"2026-10-14T20:05:34Z","timestamp":1792008334994,"version":"4.4.0"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,14]],"date-time":"2016-03-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1457913600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.cambridge.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med. Hist."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2016,4]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>This article examines a fifteenth-century remedy book, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson\u00a0c.\u00a0299, and describes its collection of 314 medieval medical prescriptions. The recipes are organised broadly from head to toe, and often several remedies are offered for the same complaint. Some individual recipes are transcribed with modern English translations. The few non-recipe texts are also noted. The difference between a remedy book and a leechbook is explained, and this manuscript is situated in relation to other known examples of late medieval medical anthologies. The particular feature that distinguishes Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson\u00a0c.\u00a0299 from other similar volumes is the evidence that it continued to be used during the sixteenth century. This usage was of two kinds. Firstly, the London lawyer who owned it not only inscribed his name but annotated the original recipe collection in various ways, providing finding-aids that made it much more user-friendly. Secondly, he, and other members of his family, added another forty-three recipes to the original collection (some examples of these are also transcribed). These two layers of engagement with the manuscript are interrogated in detail in order to reveal what ailments may have troubled this family most, and to judge how much faith they placed in the old remedies contained in this old book. It is argued that the knowledge preserved in medieval books enjoyed a longevity that extended beyond the period of the manuscript book, and that manuscripts were read and valued long after the advent of printing.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/mdh.2016.1","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,14]],"date-time":"2016-03-14T12:31:21Z","timestamp":1457958681000},"page":"133-154","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/policypage","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Evidence for the Continued Use of Medieval Medical Prescriptions in the Sixteenth Century: A Fifteenth-Century Remedy Book and its Later Owner"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"60","author":[{"given":"Margaret","family":"Connolly","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0025727316000016_r7","unstructured":"Green ointment was used on wounds to clean them and promote the growth of new flesh; its green colour derived either from herbs or from the addition of verdigris. Nerval was an ointment for the nerves or sinews."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r48","unstructured":"For a recent assessment of the early years of print production in Britain, see Vincent Gillespie and Susan Powell (eds), A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain 1476\u20131558 (Cambridge: D.S.\u00a0Brewer, 2014)."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r18","unstructured":"A list of the ten collections which contain more than twenty-five manuscripts of scientific and medical texts is given by Linda\u00a0E. Voigts, \u2018Multitudes of Middle English medical manuscripts, or, the Englishing of science and medicine\u2019, in M.\u00a0Schleissner (ed.), Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1995), 183\u201395 (191)."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r46","unstructured":"The long-lasting nature of medical recipes, and the transmission of medical knowledge across centuries, has been explored, particularly in relation to women\u2019s health, by scholars of antiquity, such as Helen King, and of the medieval and early modern periods, such as Monica\u00a0H. Green and Mary E.\u00a0Fissell, amongst others."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"For an account of a seventeenth-century family recipe book of similar longevity see Elaine Leong, \u2018Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern Household\u2019, Centaurus55, 2 (2013), 81\u2013103.","DOI":"10.1111\/1600-0498.12019"},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r43","unstructured":"See Margaret Connolly, \u2018Practical Reading for Body and Soul in Some Later Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies\u2019, Journal of the Early Book Society, 10 (2007), 151\u201374."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r42","unstructured":"Keiser, op. cit. (note\u00a016), 3672, nos\u00a0343 and\u00a0341."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r8","unstructured":"A list of herbs effective against cancer in the mouth is given on f.\u00a016r, after two prescriptions for the same problem."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r38","unstructured":"This is followed by two lines in Latin. Another brief remedy against the plague, also in Latin but with an English heading \u2018A preseruatif contra pestilent-\u2019, is inscribed on f.\u00a041v; this consists of only two lines of Latin that invoke the authority of John of Burgundy, the author of the well-known plague treatise De epidemia (or De pestilentia). See Lister\u00a0M. Matheson, \u2018M\u00e9decin sans Fronti\u00e8res? The European Dissemination of John of Burgundy\u2019s Plague Treatise\u2019, American Notes and Queries, xviii, 3 (2005), 17\u201327; for a modern English translation see Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 184\u201393."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r36","unstructured":"For a very similar Tudor recipe see Dawson, op. cit. (note\u00a017), 339."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"For more details see Margaret Connolly, \u2018Sixteenth-century readers reading fifteenth-century religious books: the Roberts family of Middlesex\u2019, in Nicole\u00a0R. Rice (ed.), Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 239\u201359.","DOI":"10.1484\/M.LMEMS.1.101543"},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r29","unstructured":"See the description of the creation of an early modern lawyer\u2019s commonplace book in Sherman, Used Books, op. cit. (note\u00a01), 127\u201348."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r25.1","unstructured":"13. C.H.??Talbot and E.A.??Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965) lists five individuals named Thomas Ward(e), of whom the closest to Thomas Roberts's description seems to be Thomas Ward, surgeon of London who died in October 1521 leaving his estate to his son Christopher, although this Thomas Ward wished to be buried in the church of St Bride in Fleet Street"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r25.2","unstructured":"14. the church of St Andrew Undershaft was in Cornhill. The comments on Warde and on BodL Rawlinson??c.??299 in R.S.??Gottfried, Doctors and Medicine in Medieval England 1340-1530 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 62, are unreliable."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r28","unstructured":"See Figure\u00a02 where the number \u2018xxiij\u2019 has been added in the top margin. Late medieval manuscripts did not have original systems of page numbers, relying instead on quire signatures which were written at the bottom of the leaves in the first half of each gathering."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r17","unstructured":"Key editions in this field are: F.\u00a0Heinrich (ed.), Ein Mittelenglisches Medizinbuch (Halle: Niemeyer, 1896); G.\u00a0Henslow (ed.), Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century Together with a List of Plants Recorded in Contemporary Writings, with their Identifications (New York: Lennox Hill, 1899); H.\u00a0Sch\u00f6ffler (ed.), Beitr\u00e4ge zur Mittelenglischen Medizinliteratur, S\u00e4chsische Forschungsinstitute in Leipzig, (Halle: Niemeyer, 1919); G.\u00a0M\u00fcller (ed.), Aus mittelenglischen Medizintexten: Die Prosarezepte des Stockholmer Miszellankodex X.90, K\u00f6lner Anglistische Arbeiten, 10 (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1929); W.R.\u00a0Dawson (ed.), A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1934; repr. Whitefish MT: Kessinger, 2010); M.S.\u00a0Ogden (ed.), The \u2018Liber de Diversis Medicinis\u2019 in the Thornton Manuscript (MS Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2), Early English Text Society, Original Series 207 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938; rev. edn, 1969); T.\u00a0Vallese (ed.), Un ignoto ricettario medico inglese del XIV secolo trovato nella biblioteca nazionale di Napoli (Naples: A.G.D.A., 1940); and most recently, Francisco Alonso Almeida (ed.), A Middle English Medical Remedy Book, Middle English Texts, 50 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014)."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r2.1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"17. See, for example, Lisa Jardine and Antony Grafton, '??\"Studied for Action\": How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy', Past and Present, 129 (1990), 30-78","DOI":"10.1093\/past\/129.1.30"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r2.2","unstructured":"18. Alison Wiggins, 'What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Copies of Chaucer?', The Library, 7th Series, 9 (2008), 3-36."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r20","unstructured":"Margaret Connolly, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XIX: Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge (Dd\u2013Oo) (Cambridge: D.S.\u00a0Brewer, 2009), draws attention to several collections of medieval medical recipes in manuscripts in Cambridge University Library. The largest groups of recipes occur in MSS Dd.5.76 (two collections of 353 and 104 recipes), Dd.6.29 (226 recipes), and Ee.1.15 (two collections of 200 and 134 recipes); other leechbooks and remedy books in Cambridge University Library include MSS Dd.10.44, Ee.1.13, Kk.6.33, and Ll.1.18."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"See John\u00a0L. Flood, \u2018\u00a0\u201cSafer on the battlefield than in the city\u201d: England, the \u201csweating sickness\u201d, and the continent\u2019, Renaissance Studies, 17, 2 (2003), 147\u201376.","DOI":"10.1111\/1477-4658.00015"},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r22","unstructured":"The manuscript has been placed in\u00a0Norfolk on the basis of its scribal dialect, see Angus McIntosh, Michael L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4\u00a0vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), i.151. For an account of vernacular medical manuscripts derived from this region see M.C.\u00a0Jones, \u2018Vernacular Literacy in Late Medieval England: The Example of East Anglian Medical Manuscripts\u2019 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2000)."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r12","unstructured":"On texts of this nature see Irma Taavitsainen, \u2018A zodiacal lunary for medical professionals\u2019, in Lister\u00a0M. Matheson (ed.), Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England (Ann Arbor, MI: Colleagues Press, 1994), 283\u2013300."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r45","unstructured":"Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls, lines 24\u20135, quoted from Larry\u00a0D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 385."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r27","unstructured":"At line 5 the scribe has supplied a word (\u2018anoynte\u2019: anoint) that was accidentally omitted from the original text."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r21","unstructured":"Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 185 has the ownership inscription of Henry Swinburne (1560\u20131623), Bachelor of Civil Law, on a flyleaf, and several other seventeenth-century names, as well as the note \u2018For Samuel Warnars sonne whoe hath a sore hedde\u2019. There are some marginal drawings and numbers, and some words in the text have been underlined; see Almeida, op. cit. (note\u00a017), 13."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r6","unstructured":"f.\u00a04v, lines\u00a013\u201318. In the first sentence \u2018pastre\u2019 is a scribal error and should read \u2018plastre\u2019. See Figure\u00a01."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r3","unstructured":"An observation made by Monica H. Green, \u2018The possibilities of literacy and the limits of reading: women and the gendering of medical literacy\u2019, in Monica\u00a0H. Green (ed.), Women\u2019s Healthcare in the Medieval West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), VII.46. Certainly much scholarship in this field has focused on recipe books associated with elite women: see Elaine Leong, \u2018Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household\u2019, Centaurus, 55 (2013), 81\u2013103, and the useful list of such studies given by Seth Stein LeJacq, \u2018The Bounds of Domestic Healing: Medical Recipes, Storytelling and Surgery in Early Modern England\u2019, Social History of Medicine, 26, 3 (2013), 454, note\u00a011."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r10","unstructured":"There is general dietary advice to alleviate \u2018\u00fee rewme or \u00fee pose\u2019 (cold or catarrh) on f.\u00a015r, and to prevent epilepsy on f.\u00a021r."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r13","unstructured":"ff.\u00a030v\u201331v."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r5","unstructured":"f.\u00a04v, lines\u00a011\u201312. See Figure\u00a01. In all transcriptions from the manuscript, abbreviation marks have been silently expanded, and scribal punctuation and capitalisation have been modernised. Scribal spelling, including the Middle English letters \u2018\u00fe\u2019 (\u2018thorn\u2019) which represents \u2018th\u2019 and \u2018\u0292\u2019 (\u2018yogh\u2019) which represents \u2018gh\u2019, has been retained. The medieval symbol that represents the measurement of an ounce has been rendered as \u2018oz\u2019. Modern English translations of the transcriptions are supplied in all instances except where confusion is extremely unlikely."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r41","unstructured":"It occurs in French (\u2018Tres boni frates\u2019) in the works of Gilbertus Anglicus (writing between 1200 and 1250) and John Gaddesden (c.\u00a01280\u20131349), see Olsan, op. cit. (note\u00a039), 364\u20135."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r26","unstructured":"The Middle English Dictionary (MED) glosses walwort as a plant, usually Danewort or dwarf elder (sambucus ebulus), but cautions that the name could also be applied to other plants including chicory and hellebore."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r1.1","unstructured":"33. For examples of both see William??H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r1.2","unstructured":"34. and William??H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r34","unstructured":"On humoral theory see Rawcliffe, op. cit. (note\u00a033), 55\u201362."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r19","unstructured":"Glasgow University Library, Hunter 185, recently edited by Almeida, op. cit. (note\u00a017); the other manuscripts are Hunter\u00a093 and Hunter\u00a0117."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r14","unstructured":"ff.\u00a040v\u201341v, \u2018Symple medecynes of gresys of rotys of sedys of gommys of metallys of o\u00feer \u00feinges of stonis \u2026\u2019 (Simple medicines of grasses, roots, seeds, resins, metals, of other things, of stones\u00a0\u2026); the first element listed is gold."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r15","unstructured":"A fifteenth-century leechbook associated with a particular individual is London, British Library, MS Harley 1735, compiled by John Crophill of Wix, Essex. See Peter Murray Jones, \u2018Crophill, John (d.\u00a0in or after 1485)\u2019, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http:\/\/www.oxforddnb.com\/view\/article\/6780and Peter Murray Jones, \u2018Witnesses to Medieval Medical Practice in the Harley Collection\u2019, Electronic British Library Journal (2008), article\u00a08. For an edition of the manuscript see L.G.\u00a0Ayoub, \u2018John Crophill\u2019s Books: An Edition of British Library MS Harley 1735\u2019 (unpublished DPhil thesis, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1994)."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r47","unstructured":"For example, Mary E. Fissell\u2019s study of women\u2019s reproduction, Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), focuses on the cheap print produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The popularity of printed recipe books in the early modern period is summarised by William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 126\u201333."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r4","unstructured":"M. Teresa Tavormina, \u2018The Twenty-Jordan Series: An Illustrated Middle English Uroscopy Text\u2019, American Notes and Queries,18, 3 (2005), 40\u201364 has identified this as an incomplete copy of a Twenty-Jordan text (62), noting that it belongs to a recognised subgroup of this most common type of Middle English uroscopies. Jordans, or urine flasks, are drawn roughly at the start of each entry."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r30","unstructured":"For an investigation of dirt in medieval manuscripts see Kathryn\u00a0M. Rudy, \u2018Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer\u2019, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 2 (2010), 1\u201326. Linne\u00a0R. Mooney, \u2018Manuscript evidence for the use of medieval English scientific and utilitarian texts\u2019, in R.F.\u00a0Green and L.R.\u00a0Mooney, Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A.G.\u00a0Rigg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 184\u2013202, notes the evidence of blood stains in British Library MSS Sloane 100 and Additional 18216."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Theriac was a costly panacea imported from Italy for use against poison and the plague, see Christiane Nockels Fabbri, \u2018Treating Medieval Plague: The Wonderful Virtues of Theriac\u2019, Early Science and Medicine, 12, 3 (2007), 247\u201383.","DOI":"10.1163\/157338207X205115"},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r40","unstructured":"See Keiser, op. cit. (note\u00a016), 3671, no.\u00a0333; 3673, no.\u00a0351; and 3670\u20131, no.\u00a0328."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r11","unstructured":"On such efficacy statements see M.C.\u00a0Jones, \u2018Formula and Formulation: Efficacy Phrases in Medieval English Medical Manuscripts\u2019, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 99 (1998), 199\u2013209."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r24","unstructured":"Eight manuscripts may be connected with the Roberts family, ibid."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r32","unstructured":"In the first line \u2018the\u2019 is a scribal error for \u2018them\u2019; see Figure\u00a03."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r33.1","unstructured":"47. See Mazhar Shah (ed. and trans.), The General Principles of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine (Karachi: Naveed Clinic, 1966), 190-1"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r33.2","unstructured":"48. Michael??C. Seymour (ed.), On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, 3??vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975-88), I.579. For a fuller account of late medieval beliefs concerning water see Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 188-97."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r16","unstructured":"For a more complete listing of both remedy books and leechbooks see George\u00a0R. Keiser (ed.) Works of Science and Information, Vol. 10 of A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050\u20131500, ed. A.E.\u00a0Hartung (New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998), 3653\u20138 and 3837\u201347."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r31","unstructured":"The inclusion of veterinary material in this type of manuscript is very common. For another example see Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.1.13, indexed in Connolly, op cit. (note\u00a020), 86\u201394; details of many others may be found in the British Library online catalogue of the medical manuscripts in the Harley collection. See also the recent study by Briony Aitchison, \u2018\u00a0\u201cfor to knowen here sicknesse and to do the lechecraft there fore\u201d: Animal Ailments and their Treatment in Late Medieval England\u2019 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010), http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10023\/1024."},{"key":"S0025727316000016_r39","unstructured":"Such texts had a long history: see, for example, Tony Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England (Cambridge: D.S.\u00a0Brewer, 1990). For a survey of the charms that occur in academic medical treatises see Lea\u00a0T. Olsan, \u2018Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice\u2019, Social History of Medicine, 16, 3 (2003), 343\u201366."},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r9.1","unstructured":"52. See Melitta Weiss Adamson, Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in the Regimen Sanitatis Literature, 800-1400 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995)"},{"key":"#cr-split#-S0025727316000016_r9.2","unstructured":"53. for an overview of dietary advice in the early modern period see Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002)."}],"container-title":["Medical History"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/S0025727316000016","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,5]],"date-time":"2019-09-05T14:27:15Z","timestamp":1567693635000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/S0025727316000016\/type\/journal_article"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,14]]},"references-count":53,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2016,4]]}},"alternative-id":["S0025727316000016"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/mdh.2016.1","relation":{},"ISSN":["0025-7273","2048-8343"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0025-7273","type":"print"},{"value":"2048-8343","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,14]]},"assertion":[{"value":"\u00a9 The Author 2016. Published by Cambridge University Press.\u00a0This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.","name":"license","label":"License","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}}]}}