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Harley MS 950

Record Id:

040-002046779

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046779

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x0001c8

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 950

Title:

Collection of medical recipes

Scope & Content:

This manuscript comprises two separate early 16th-century collections of medical recipes (ff. 1r-75v; ff. 80r-179v). A few other recipes were added later in the 16th century (ff. 76r-79v). The recipes in the main collection were numbered in the margin '1-497' by a later reader.

Contents:

Part 1:

ff. 1r-75v. Collection of English medical recipes (c. 276 recipes), the first one with the title: 'Item for the hedache a remedi', beginning: 'Ther was a woman that longe time hede suffred the hedeache'. Names of authorities added as notabilia in the margins of ff. 1r-7r, including: ‘Lamfranke’, ‘Experimenter’, ‘Nicholaus’, ‘Platearius’, ‘Girardus’, ‘Diascorides’, ‘Bartolomeus’, and ‘Galien’. Listed in eVK2, no. 3433.00.

Part 2:

ff. 80r-179v: Collection of English medical recipes (c. 387 recipes), the first one with the title: 'For paine in þe hede which oftentimes chancheth after a greate sicknesse with het risinge and of the stomack and assendinge in to þe hede’, beginning: ‘Take a rose cake and make it fite for both þe temples'. Listed in eVK2, no. 440.00.

f. 180r: An alphabetical list of male names in three columns (‘A’-‘D’).

The manuscript contains a few additions:

f. 1*verso (first paper pastedown): An inscription in English: ‘I ?hard a lower ?lait lament and I began to ?spee[...] him what was the cause of this’; written in the 17th century.

f. 1*verso (second paper pastedown): An inscription in English: ‘At the returne [of this] Booke 10d [...]’; written in the 17th century.

ff. 76r-79v. Medical English recipes (c. 5 recipes), beginning: 'Mather casteth out venem out of mannes bodie '. Listed in eVK2, no. 7236.00; written in the 16th century.

Decoration:

Large initials (1 line) in red. Marginalia (ff. 1r-75v) in red, some (ff. 1r-5v) surrounded by a cartouche.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046779", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 950: Collection of medical recipes" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046779

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 950 : Collection of medical recipes

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0950]/040-002046779

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English
English, Middle

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1500

End Date:

1599

Date Range:

16th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment (ff. 80-180); paper (f. 1* and ff. 1r-79r).

Dimensions: 85 x 60 mm (text space: 65 x 40 mm; Part 1 is ruled in pen; Part 2 is unruled. Written in single columns of 15-22 lines).

Foliation: ff. 1* + 180 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end); 2 unfoliated paper pastedowns on f. 1*verso; f. 177 is bound reversed and upside down.

Collation: Part 1 is made with twenty gatherings of four leaves (first gathering missing the fourth leaf); Part 2 is made of thirteen gatherings of alternating six and ten leaves (last gathering missing the fifth leaf).

Script: Gothic cursive (littera cursiva media) with some Anglicana features.

Binding: British Museum in-house; gold-tooled mottled brown leather with the initials ‘M. B.’ (Museum Britannicum) gold stamped at the centre of outside upper cover; red fore edge.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

Felton family, 17th century: a list of names of members of their family is inscribed on f. 180v: ‘Elizabeth, John, Henry, William, Elizabeth, John, Fraunces, Edmund, and Edward ffelton’.

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts. Harley shelfmarks '63.B.12 / 950' [previous '64' crossed out and substituted by '63'] in ink, and '2/III A' in pencil (f. 1*recto).

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), p. 481.

Rossell Hope Robbins, 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English', Speculum, 45:3 (1970), 393-415 (p. 404).

Linda Ehrsam Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference, CD-ROM, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006 = eVK2), nos 3433.00, 440.00, 7236.00.

The cataloguing of this manuscript was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Places:

England