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Sloane MS 6
- Record Id:
- 040-002112343
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000505.0x00029d
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165173066.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 6
- Title:
- Medical treatises in Middle English by Hunain Ibn Ishak, Al-'Ibadi, William of Saliceto, John Arderne and others
- Scope & Content:
-
A collection of medical treatises:
ff. 1r-9r: Hunain Ibn Ishak, Al-'Ibadi: Isagoge in parvam artem Galeni, in Latin and English; Claudius Galenus: Ars, parva cum isagoge Johannitii.
ff. 10r-13v: A treatise on medicines and physick, including 'A table of knowledge of symple medecines'; 'Examples of medicines of gret substance' and 'Of savoures of medecines'; alphabetical lists of hot, cold, dry and moist medicines (ff. 14r-17v); tables of the humours and of the 'seven naturale thinges'.(ff. 19v-21v).
ff. 22r-32v: A text with the rubric, 'Examples of medicines knowen by op[er]ation [?after Richardine]'.
ff. 33r-40v: A treatise on phlebotomy, 'the mirro[r] of fflebotomie'.
ff. 41r- 42v: A treatise on suction or drawing blood, 'the tretys of Ventosying' .
ff. 43r-46v: A treatise on the times for the taking of medicines, 'The tretys of tymes to be chosen ...'.
ff 46v-50v: Abu al Hasan Ali Ibn Abi Al-Rajjál, Al Kurtubi Al-Shaibání: Of the state of a sick man.
f. 51r: To make red and green wax.
ff. 51v-52r: List of chapters in the three treatises on ff. 33r-50v.
ff. 53r-140: A treatise on surgery, books 1, 2, 3 and 5 (imperfect), probably the work of William of Saliceto (or Guglielmo da Saliceto of Piacenza, see 'Voigts-Kurtz Database of Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference' at https://cctr1.umkc.edu/cgi-bin/search [accessed 19.05.22]) but attributed here to William of Parma in the rubric, 'Here begynneth Will[ia]m de p[ar]me contenynge alle his bokis ...'; the text begins, 'It is purposid to the, my gode ffrend to make a book of surgerye'.
ff. 141-174v: John Arderne (b. 1307, d. c. 1378): Practica de fistula in ano and of fistula in other places of the body, divided into 10 parts: Fistula in ano, Fistula in the limbs, Of Mormales, Of Piles, Of Tenesmus, Of Prolapse, Of Clysters, Of Powders, Of Oils and Waters, Of Valences.
ff. 175-177v: Drawings of the history of medicine and of various diseases and of surgical instruments.
ff. 178r-179v: A treatise with the rubric, 'Of confection of sirupez', including a list of syrups.
ff. 180r-182r: A treatise on urine, beginning 'Secundum auctores viginti sunt urinarum colores...'.
ff. 183-203v: Claudius Galenus: De ingenio sanitats, translated into English as Of witte of hele, books 3, 4.
ff. 203v-205v: Charms and medical recipes.
Decoration:
A series of ink drawings with captions (ff. 144v, 175r-177v).
The subjects of the drawings are:
f. 144v: The instruments used in the operation of a fistula in ano: the sequere me or probe: the syringa or syringe: the acus rostrata or snowted needle: the frænum Cæsaris or fourfold thread: the cochlear or shield: the tendiculum and wrayste or vertile.The left-hand figure shows the surgeon probing a sinus in the buttock; the right-hand figure shows the tendiculum, wrayste and frænum Cæsaris in position just before two sinuses are laid open in the left buttock. The snowted needle is about to be drawn through a series of fistulæ in the right buttock.
f. 175r: Apollo as a physician; above are the words, perhaps using spells to induce a trance in three patients, with the words, 'Apolo helyd men with charmes and instyantamentes'.
f. 175v: A history of medicine: Aesculapius (son of Apollo) hands a bowl of medicine to a patient (upper left); three figures, including Ypocras and Galen gather herbs (upper right); Asclepius demonstrates the use of a balance in a pharmacy while three young students make potions, two using pestles and mortars (lower left); Hippocrates (or Galen) holds up a jordan (urine flask) to the sun and a student holds up a bowl; the basket for carrying the flask is under the table.
f. 176r-v: Cautery diagrams: two sets of twelve figures wearing only underpants, showing the cautery points as red dots on the human body.
f. 177r: Two figures showing cautery points, one on a rack, labeled 'a lep[er]; three drawings of women physicians using ventose or cupping glasses on a male patient.
f. 177v: A woman placing cupping glasses on a female patient; a table of surgical instruments copied from a manuscript of the works of Guy de Chauliac (b. c. 1300, d. 1368): on the left are cauteries and on the right are instrument for removing and treating fistulae of the anus, a speculum and three cauteries.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Medieval and Renaissance Women
Sloane Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002112343 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 6 : Medical treatises in Middle English by Hunain Ibn Ishak, Al-'Ibadi, William of Saliceto, John Arderne and others - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[4136]/040-002112343
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Sloane MS 1-4100
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165173066.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1425
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper.
Dimensions: 285 x 200 mm.
Foliation: ff. 205 (+ 3 paper flyleaves at the beginning, and 3 at the end). Folio numbers in Roman numerals in the lower right edge (e.g., ff. 15-18), many trimmed away.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector; acquired by him in 1694 for 5s (see his list of manuscripts in Sloane MS 3972C; Nickson, 'Hans Sloane' (1987), p. 64 (his manuscript no. 7).
Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Publications:
-
Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Sloanianae (Manuscripts 1-1091), ([London: British Museum], no date), no. 6.
Treatises of Fistula in Ano: Haemorrhoids, and Clysters by John Arderne, ed. by D'Arcy Power, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 139 (London: Early English Text Society, 1910), p. xxxiv, pl. opposite pl. II.
H. P. Cholmeley, John of Gaddesden and the Rosa Medicinae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 81.
Karl Sudhoff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter: Graphische und textliche Untersuchungen in mittelalterlichen Handschriften, 2 vols (Leipzig: Barth, 1914-1918), I, Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, 10, pp. 116-18, 139. pls XXX-XXXI, XXXVII-XXXVIII.
Loren MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 5, 2 parts bound together (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), with Thomas Herndon, Part II, Medical Miniatures in Extant Manuscripts: A Checklist, no. 69.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 33, 91-94, 109-10, 123-25, 130-31, figs. 6, 41, 49, 56, 60.
M. A. E. Nickson, 'Hans Sloane, Book Collector and Cataloguer, 1682-1698', British Library Journal, 13 (1987), 52-89 (p. 64).
Peter Murray Jones, ‘Four Middle English Translation of John of Arderne’, in Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. by A. J. Minnis, York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, I (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), pp. 61-89 (pp. 61 n. 2, 69 n. 31, 72).
Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Design, Decoration and Illustration’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-64 (p. 57 n. 29).
Peter Murray Jones, 'British Library MS Sloane 76: A Translator's Holograph', in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda l. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1998 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp. 21-39 (p. 39 n. 18).
Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1995), pls on pp. 68, 69.
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, 76, 199.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 1998; first publ. as Medieval Medical Miniatures, 1984), pp. 28, 73-75, 88-89, 97-98, 102, figs 66, 81, 89, 94.
Joseph L. Henderson and Dyane N. Sherwood, Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis (Hove: Brunner-Routledge, 2003), fig. 3.
Monica H. Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 127, n. 28.
Alain Ségal, 'Nouvelles réflexions sur les instruments figurés dans les manuscrits du traité De fistula in ano de John Aderne, Hegel, 1.2 (2011), 16- (pp. 22-23, figs 1,7), online at https://www.cairn.info/revue-hegel-2011-2-page-16.htm [accessed 12.4.22].
Michael Leahy, ' 'To speke of phisik': medical discourse in late medieval English culture' (unpublished PhD thesis, 2015), pp. 82, 86-89, 133, 351.
'Voigts-Kurtz Database of Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference' at https://cctr1.umkc.edu/cgi-bin/search [accessed 19.05.22])
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)