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Royal MS 18 A VI
- Record Id:
- 040-002107422
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x000233
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 18 A VI
- Title:
- Medical treatises, chiefly in Middle English
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains medical, herbal, obstetrical and gynaecological treatises and recipes in a variety of hands, dating from the beginning of the 15th century to the 16th century, predominantly in Middle English. It is also notable for the inclusion of 3 large urine diagrams and six full-page anatomical and bloodletting figures.
Contents:
ff. 1r-20r: Medical treatise, in 165 chapters, with table of contents at the end.
f. 20r: Notes on times for bleeding, in Middle English and Latin.
ff. 20r.-21v: Miscellaneous medical and cookery recipes (including 'chare de coynes' and 'chare wardon', i.e. preserves of quinces and pears, and 'gyngerbred').
f. 22r-22v: Poem on love, in a 16th-century hand, beginning 'He that wilbe a lover in every wise / He muste have thre thinges whiche Jeame lackith', followed by later medical recipes.
ff. 23r-34v: Treatise on urines and diseases including diagrams.
ff. 35r-54r: Treatise on the diseases of women, sometimes called 'The Sekenesse of wymmen' (see Green, 'Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts' (1992), p. 77). Other copies are in Sloane MS 5 and Sloane MS 2463, a fuller recension in a different order and with an additional preface and diagrams of the foetus in the womb, missing in Royal MS 18 A vi.
ff. 54r-55v: Guy de Chauliac on hematoscopy, scarifying and cupping, translated to Middle English, beginning 'A phisycian behoveth to knowe in manere inspeccions'.
f. 56v: Recipe, beginning 'A drynke ffor pappys off a woman that ake and rankyll'.
ff. 57r-58v: Approximately 25 recipes on gynaecology and obstetrics, beginning 'For to make wymmen to haue her flouris'.
ff. 59r-63r: 23 recipes for aqua vite, beginning 'Her biginneth the makyng of aqua vite and of othere precious watyrs'; ending with miscellaneous recipes in a variety of hands.
ff. 64r-87v: Herbal, known as the Agnus castus, originally two gatherings of 12 paper leaves ,with outer and inner leaves of parchment, in a hand of the second quarter of the 15th century; beginning 'Agnus castus is an herbe þat me clepyþ tutsayne..'. Incomplete; other copies (both with additional entries) are in Additional MS 4698 and Arundel MS 272.
ff. 88v-102r: Miscellaneous recipes and extracts from herbals, including some from the missing part of the Agnus castas; beginning 'Rosa rebia (sic) ys an herbe that men clepyth rede rosys'. On smaller paper, in late 15th-century hand.
ff. 102v-103v: Charm for an amulet, said to have been sent to Charlemagne, in English and Latin; beginning 'Thys ys the messure of the wounde of our lorde'. On smaller paper, in a late 15th-century hand.
Decoration:
6 full-page anatomical and bloodletting diagrams of the human body in black ink, one accented by blue pigment (ff. 32r-34v). 3 urine diagram wheels in black ink, urine painted in colours (ff. 27r-28r). Zoomorphic line fillers in purple ink (f. 8r). Marginal drawings throughout. Large decorated initial in red (f. 35r). Small decorated initials in red throughout. Rubrics in red throughout.
The subjects of the six full-page diagrams are:
f. 32r: Bloodletting points, frontal.
f. 32v: Bloodletting points, dorsal.
f. 33r: A vein/artery figure, frontal, with vessels coloured in blue pigment.
f. 33v: Avein/artery figure, dorsal, unfinished.
f. 34r: A figure cut open to reveal the organs of the abdomen and the thorax.
f. 34v: A skeleton.
The handwriting on the pages surrounding the urine and anatomical diagrams has been dated to the late 15th century, and the diagrams themselves, given the degree of facial modelling, appear to be of the same date (see Warner and Gibson, Catalogue of Royal Manuscripts (1921), II (2), p. 264).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107422 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 18 A VI : Medical treatises, chiefly in Middle English - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1575]/040-002107422
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A paper and parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- Languages:
- English
English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1599
- Date Range:
- 15th century-16th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
-
Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper and parchment (ff. 64, 69, 70, 76, 82 and 87).
Dimensions: 210 x 140 mm and 150 x 100 mm (ff. 88-103).
Foliation: ff. 103 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end).
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600. Dark red leather with the royal coat of arms of George II.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
John Lumley, 1st baron Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), collector and conspirator: inscribed with his name (f. 1r); listed in the 1609 catalogue of his collection, no. 2311 (see The Lumley Library, p. 258); his library acquired by Henry, prince of Wales.
Henry Frederick, prince of Wales (b. 1594, d. 1612), eldest child of James I: his collection became part of the Royal Library.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Administrative Context:
- England.
- Publications:
-
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's Collections, 4 vols. (London: The British Museum, 1921), II (2), p. 264.
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1922), pp. 197, 200.Carleton F. Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York: Printed for the Index Society by Columbia University Press, 1943), no. 1170.
Agnus Castus: A Middle English Herbal Reconstructed from Various Manuscripts, ed. with introduction by Gösta Brodin, Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature, 6 (Upsala: Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1950), p. 87.
Kenneth G. Wilson, 'Five Fugitive Pieces of Fifteenth-Century Secular Verse', Modern Language Notes, 69 (1954), 18-22 (p. 22).
The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609, ed. by Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson (London: British Museum, 1956), p. 258.
Reginald Thorne Davies, Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 219.
Loren MacKinney and Thomas Herndon, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, New Series, 5 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), no. 86.60.
Beryl Rowland, Medieval Woman's Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1981), pp. 25, 47.
Monica H. Green, 'Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 14 (1992), 53-88 (pp. 53, 60, 78-79).
Women’s Writing in Middle English, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (London: Longman, 1992), p. 290.
Rosemary Greentree, The Middle English Lyric and Short Poem (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), pp. 150-51.
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: The British Library, 2005), no. 1170.
John C. Hirsh, Medieval Lyric: Middle English Lyrics, Ballads, and Carols (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 115.
Monica H. Green and Linne R. Mooney, 'The Sickness of Women', in Sex, Aging, and Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe, ed. by M. Teresa Tavormina, 2 vols (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), II, pp. 455-568 (p. 457).
Daniel Wakelin, Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375–1510 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 146, 148.
'He that will be a lover in every wise (no. 1906)', The Digital Index of Middle English Verse: An Open-Access, Digital Edition of the Index of Middle English Verse, ed. and compiled by Linne R. Mooney and others. DOI: http://www.dimev.net/record.php?recID=1906#wit-1906-1 [Accessed 26 April 2017.] - Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Lumley, John, 1st Baron Lumley, 1533-1609,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000454548354,
see also http://viaf.org/viaf/159053447 - Related Material:
-
From Warner and Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's Collections (1921), II (2), p. 264:
'MEDICAL COLLECTIONS, chiefly in English, viz.:-
1. 'Here begynnys medicynys þat gode lechis haue mad and drawen owt of her bokys, Galyen and Aslipius and Ypocras, thei were beste [lechis] of þe world, of al maner of sorys and wondys . . . and for all maner ewelys of þe body boþe wyt inne and wyt owte medicynys prowyd schalt þou fynd in þis bok on Englys tonge': a collection of the same character as 12 G. IV, art. 14, 17 A. VIII, art. 1, 17 A. XXXII, art. 3, though the individual recipes very often differ. In 165 chapters, with table at the end, followed (f. 20) by Latin notes on times for bleeding. Beg. 'For þe hed make lye ot werweyne and of betayne or of wormewod and þerewyth wasse þin hed'; ends 'boþe helyng and drawyng. Amen '. f. 1.
Art. 1 is in a hand of circ. 1400. At the end are added in a later (15th cent.) hand some miscellaneous medical and cookery recipes (including 'chare de coynes' and 'chare wardon', i.e. preserves of quinces and pears, and 'gyngerbred'). Beg. 'For to mak a gom clowt'; breaks off imperfectly 'Here is a makyng of aqua . . .'. Art. 2 is in a late 15th cent. hand. On the fly-leaf (f. 22) are six lines of verse, beg. 'He that wilbe a lover in euery wise He muste haue thre thinges whiche Jeame lackith', and some illiterately spelt medical recipes.
2. 'To know the state of waters se well this tretes and _ou shalt know perfytly all the infirmites and medicens for þem, the wiche be prouyd be Ypacros, be Galien and be Egyd and oþer doctors þat trete of this mater': collections on urines and diseases, with three coloured drawings of urines and six anatomical drawings. Beg. 'At the begynnyng []e shall vnderstond þat we take vryn for manys water'; ends 'theys as sufficyent'. f. 23. Art. 3 is in another late 15th cent, hand. Marginal additions in the illiterate hand of f. 22.
3. Treatise on diseases of women. Other copies are in Sloane MSS. 5, f. 158 (with a strange colophon, 'Explicit liber pucreseos Galieni' and a later heading 'Greuance of women'), and 2463, f. 194 (a fuller recension in a different order and with a preface not found here). Beg. 'All so we schal vnderstonde þat wommen haue lesse hete'; ends ' Scabes beside the kne withoute. Now in this fyne of the partycle y shal make an ende . . . for thys in my masterys tyme and myne I haue well preued and cured and helyd many a pacyent, thanked be god of hys grace sendyng to that is the heyghest and the beste leche. Amen'. Perhaps, however, the last two chapters (on blood-letting, &c., beg. 'A phisycian behoueth to knowe in manere inspeccions', f. 54), as they are not in Sloane MS. 5, are distinct from the rest, in which case the tract ends 'bynde it fast that [it] falle not away'. f. 35.
Art. 4 consists of two leaves in a hand perhaps slightly earlier.
4. Miscellancous recipes for diseases of women. Beg. 'For to make wymmen to haue her flouris'. f. 57. Art. 5 is in another late 15th cent. hand.
5. 'Her biginneth the makyng of aqua vite and of othere precious watyrs': 23 recipes, beg. 'Aqua vite. Feyll a pote of redvyne'. f. 59. At the end are a few recipes in other hands.
Art. 6, originally two gatherings of 12 leaves (outer and inner leaves of vellum), is in a hand of the second quarter of the 15th cent.
6. Medical herbal, alphabetically arranged. Imperfect at the end. Beg. 'Agnus castus is an herbe þat me clepyþ tutsayne oþer parkleuens and þys herbe hath leuis sumdele rede'. Breaks off in Pulegium rurale. Other copies (but both ending with S) are in Add. MS. 4698, f. 16 b, and Arundel MS. 272, f. 36. f. 64. Artt. 7, 8, on smaller paper, are in late 15th cent. hands.
7. Miscellaneous recipes and extracts from herbals, including some from the missing part of the same herbal as the preceding article. Beg. 'Rosa rebia (sic) ys an herbe that men clepyth rede rosys'. Imperfect at end. f. 88 b.
8. Charm for an amulet, said to have been sent to Charlemagne. Engl. and Lat. Beg. 'Thys ys the messure of the wounde of our lorde'. f. 102 b.
Paper (except 8 leaves of art. 6, see above) ; ff. 103. 83/4 in. x 61/4 in. (artt. 2, 3, 6) or rather smaller (artt. 7, 8 are 53/4 in. x 4 in.). Circ. 1400-late XV cent. Sec. fol. 'for hym þat may'. Belonged (f. 1) to [John, Lord] Lumley. Lumley cat. f. 379; not recognizable in the other old catalogues.'