Category: Books

Book - Medical Writings from Early Medieval England

5/17/2023

I have to thank Elska for turning me on to this new release. I am beyond excited to dive into this one.

The book is by John D Niles and Maria A. D'Aronco and I am just delighted. This volume contains the Old English Herbal, Old English Remedies, Lacnunga, Peri Didaxeon and Miscellaneous Remedies. I have the first and third in other volumes, but look forward to comparing the works. I do not have. Peri Didaxeon at all, and the Miscellaneous Remedies come from a wealth of other sources.

Each item has the original text and the translation. There is an index of Old English and Latin plant names.

Basically, this is going to be SO GOOD and I am very excited about having it!

You can purchase the book here:  https://amzn.to/3IfPGQf

Description from Amazon: Unlike elsewhere in Europe, vernacular writings on health and healing had a major place in early medieval England. These texts―unique local remedies and translations of late antique Latin treatises―offer insights into the history of science and medicine, social history, scribal practices, and culture. Some cures resemble ones still used today; others are linguistically extravagant, prescribing ambitious healing practices. Alongside recipes for everyday ailments such as headaches are unparalleled procedures for preventing infant mortality, restoring lost cattle, warding off elf-shot, or remedying the effects of flying venom.

Medical Writings from Early Medieval England presents the first comprehensive edition and translation from Old English of these works in more than 150 years. Volume I includes The Old English Herbal, Remedies from Animals, Lacnunga, the Peri Didaxeon, and a compendium of miscellaneous texts.

Table of contents and sample below:

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Books for Background - Review

9/4/2022

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Typically I fall in love with a material culture (usually clothing) and learn about the garments, build a wardrobe and then start to learn other information to more fulling try to build out a persona. This approach rarely gets me very far into the persona building, but I have a great time with what I do craft and learn.

With my SCA Forestry/14th Century project I made an outfit just to get started, and dove right in on the herbs. Before I go further I am really diving into reading to build a better framework from the ground up.

To be fair, this is also much easier to research with an aim towards persona building than anything I have done before. The materials are readily available and mostly in English. This is entirely unheard of for me, and it is rather refreshing.

You can view most of my library for this subject matter HERE, though I still do have a few more books to add.

Below I am going to review two of the items that read this past month that immensely helped me set the stage for the work I plan to keep doing.

The first book I want to talk about is the Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. This book was an exceedingly easy read, with a comfortable casual tone that I found engaging while still being informative. It answered a ton of questions about life during the period that I had already tried to source elsewhere with incomplete success.

I loved Medieval history in college (not as much as ancient history), but none of this focuses on the daily lives of the people in the period. This book has short chapters which cover pretty much every topic available. Who could read an write in period? What were the social classes? How did people rest, worship or be entertained? What did they eat? What did the live in? How were villages, towns and cities organized? What did medicine look like in the period? How did they tell time?

I had a few small quibbles with things here and there, but over all, I loved the book. It gives you enough information on a topic that you can go forth armed with the keywords or names needed to do further research. Much of the information is backed by states from the period (census records, wills, and other written items from the period). If you are considering 14th Century England and need an enjoyable background to help start building things out, I feel this is a decent starting place.

The next book I read isMedieval Medicine by Toni Mount. This book was pretty fantastic all around. As with the above, I would consider this “light reading” compared to my normal fare of archaeological reports. The book was vastly entertaining overall.

First, the book basically follows the progression of medicine through the Middle Ages in Europe (largely focused on England, but other cities known for their medical schools also are frequently discussed). Through this book I became familiar with who the famed professionals of the period were, as well as those from much earlier times on whose works they relied.

The concepts of medical thought were well explained, and including some of the weirder treatments that make you just weird out. This was balanced with brief information on cures that likely did work in period and notes on how they are still used today or with references to more modern studies on the items.

Also important to me was understanding the structure of medical practice in period, and the division of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries in period, as well as the education or apprenticeship of each.

If you have even a mild interest in medieval European medicine, or just want an informative and entertaining read, I cannot recommend this book enough.

I have three books I am tackling next. Two are based on the works of the ancient physician Galen (129-216BCE), as this knowledge was still studied and in use in the Middle Ages. The first is The Alphabet of Galen and the other is Galen: Selected Works. The other book that is currently sitting next to me, just waiting to be picked up is Popular Medicine in the Thirteenth Century England by Tony Hunt. I hope to review these as I read them as well.

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Forestry Project Plant, Medicine, Apothecary & Food Bibliography

5/26/2022

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My list of resources for plants, plantlore and medicine for this project is below. I will keep this sheet updated, and add the link to each blog post as needed. (UPDATED: September 19, 2022.)

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, University of Aberystwyth. https://anglo-norman.net/anglo-norman.net/

Arsdall, Anne Van. Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine, Routledge, 2010.

Backx-de Groot, Githa. "Historical overview of herbal medicine from ancient to modern times", Utrecht University, 2013.

Biggam, Carole. "Magic and Medicine - Early Medieval Plant-Name Studies", Leeds Studies in English, University of Leeds, 2013.

Black, Maggie. The Medieval Cookbook, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2012.

Blunt, Wilfrid and Sandra Raphael. The Illustrated Herbal (Manuscripts), Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979.

Bremness, Lesley. Herbs, Dorling Kindersley, 1994.

Burnett, John. "The Giustiani Medicine Chest", Medical History, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Cholmely, H. P. John of Gaddesden, Clarendon Press, 1912.

Collins, Minta. Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Tradtions, The British Library, 2000.

Cogliati Arano, Luisa. The Medieval Health Handbook – Tacuinum Sanitatis, George Brazukker, Inc, 1976.

Dave’s Garden, Plant Files, davesgarden.com

Dictionary of Old English Plant Names, 2007-2022. http://oldenglish-plantnames.org/preface

Dean, Jenny. A Heritage of Color, Search Press, 2014.

Dendle, Peter and Alain Touwaide. Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, The Boydell Press, 2008.

Everett, Nicholas. The Alphabet of Galen, University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Fitch, John G. On Simples, Attributed to Dioscorides, Brill, 2022.

Frantzen, Allen J. Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England, The Boydell Press, 2014.

Getz, Faye M. Healing and Society in Medieval England, University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.

Hoffman, David. The Complete Illustrated Holistic Herbal, Element, 1996.

Kiple, Kenneth F. The Cambridge World History of Food, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kiple, Kenneth F. The Cambridge World History of Food, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Galen (translation by P.N. Singer). Galen, Selected Works, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Getz, Faye. Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English translation of the pharmaceutical writings of Gilbertus Anglicanus, University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.

Greco, Gina L and Christine M. Rose. The Good Wife’s Guide, Cornell University Press, 2009.

Green, Monica H. The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 2001.

Hall, Alaric. "Madness, Medication - and Self-Induced Hallucination? Elleborous (and Woody Nightshare) in Anglo-Saxon England, 700-900", Magic and Medicine: Early Medieval Plant-Name Studies, University of Leeds, 2013.

Henisch, Bridget A. The Medieval Cook, The Boydell Press, 2009.

Hoffman, David. The Complete Illustrated Holistic Herbal, Element, 1996.

Hozeski, Bruce W. Hildegarde’s Healing Plants from her Medieval Classic Physica, Beacon Press Books, 2001.

Hunt, Tony. Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, Boydell & Brewer, 1990.

Hunt, Tony. Plant Names of Medieval England, D.S. Brewer, 1989.

Hunt, Tony. Three Receptaria from Medieval England, The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages at Oxford, 2001.

Landsberg, Sylvia. The Medieval Garden, University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Lang, S. J. "The 'Philomena' of John Bradmore and its Middle English Derivative: A Perspecitve on Surgery in Late Medieval England", University of St. Andrews, 1998.

Lonicer, Adam. Kreuterbuch, kunstliche Conterfeytunge der Bäume, Stauden, Kreuter, Getreyde, Gewürtze, was printed in Franfort by Christian Engenolph, 1587. (Additional versions of this book were still being printed into the 18th century.)

Mabey, Richard and Michael McIntyre. The New Age Herbalist, Collier Books, 1998.

Mäkinen, Martii. "Between Herbals et alia: Intertextuality in Medieval English Herbals", University of Helsinki, 2006.

Matterer, James L. Tacuinum Sanitatis in “Gode Cookery”, 2009. http://www.godecookery.com/tacuin/tacuin.htm

McKerracher, Anglo-Saxon Crops and Weeds, Archaeopress Publishing, 2019

Meyer, J. E. The Herbalist, Meyer, 1960.

Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan, 2022. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary

Mirrione, Claudia. "Theory and Terminology of Mixture in Galen", University of Berlin, 2017

Mount, Toni. Medieval Medicine, Amberley Publishing, 2016.

Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, Touchstone, 2008.

National Audubon Society. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Knopf, 2001.

Norri, Juhani. Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English, 1375-1550, Ashgate, 2016.

Obaldeston, Tess Ann (Editor), Pedanius Dioscorides (Author), Dioscorides: De Materia Medica, Ibidus Press, 2000.

Paavilainen, Helena M. Medieval Pharmacotherapy: Continuity and Change, Brill, 2009.

Pavord, Anna. The Naming of Names, Bloomsbury USA, 2005.

Peterson, Lee and Roger Tory Peterson. A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America, Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Petrides, George A. and Janet Wehr. Peterson Guides - A Field Guide to Eastern Trees: Eastern United States and Canada, Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Pettit, Edward Thomas. A critical edition of the Old English Lacnunga in BL MS Harley 585, King’s College London, 1996.

Plantnet.org. Plant identification application.

Pollington, Stephen. Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healting, Anglo-Saxon Books, 2011.

Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus (4th Century CE), 1428-1500, Publisher - Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 1428-1500. Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/365881

Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus (4th Century CE), Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1431, 1070-1100, Canterbury, Digital Bodleian. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/98127ed0-4bde-41e0-a93a-98a185b01de8/surfaces/3ec57965-769e-4ed2-8573-16fe862c7d49/

Redon, et. al. The Medieval Kitchen – Recipes from France and Italy, University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Reed, Zsuzsanna Papp. "'Other Plants I Can't Name for You in English': The Plant Composition of Monastic Herb Gardens in Late Medieval England".

Singer, P.N. and Philip J. van der Eijk. Galen: Works on Human Nature - Volume 1 - Mixtures, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Di Gennaro Splendore, B. (2021). The Triumph of Theriac, Nuncius, 36(2), 431-470, Brill.

Sullivan, Karen. The Complete Family Guide to Natural Home Remedies, Element, 1997.

Touwaide, Alain and Peter Dendle. Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, 2008.

Trease, G. E. and J. H. Hodson. "The inventory of John Hexham, a 15th Century Apothecary", Medical History, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

The Tudor Pattern Book, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1504.

Wildflower.org. Plant Database, The University of Texas at Austin.

Zupko, Ronald Edward. "Medieval Apothecary Weights and Measures: The Principal Units of England and France", Pharmacy in History, Volume 32, Number 2, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. JStore Link.

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SCA Forestry

This page is dedicated to my project and research related to SCA Forestry Guild activities and my expanding medieval apothecary. Here I will build out a 14th Century English men's kit and have some adventures in the woodlands!

Book - Medical Writings from Early Medieval England

Books for Background - Review

Forestry Project Plant, Medicine, Apothecary & Food Bibliography

SCA Forestry

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