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Sloane MS 2463
- Record Id:
- 040-002114830
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000653.0x000090
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165172496.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 2463
- Title:
- Collection of medical texts, including treatises on anatomy, surgery and gynaecology
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 2r-52v: A treatise on anatomy with a prologue beginning, 'Galyene that was lanterne of ffysiciens and of srgens seyth in the sevententhe book de utilitate p[ar]ticulari.'.
ff. 51v-151v: 'The book of operations' (see colophon on f. 151v), a book on surgery and other treatments, preceded by a list of contents and prologue, beginning, 'In the name off God. Amen. Here begynneth a tretys of Ypocras, Galyen, Avicen, Henricus de Amonda Villa, Willelmus de Saliceto, Lanffrank, Tederyk, Brune, Rogeryn and other auctoris the whiche were expert surgenes, and ther schall two p[ar]ties be conteyned in this book.'
ff. 151v-152v: 'A drink to knytte a broken bone.'
ff. 153v-193v: 'The book whiche is clepid the Antitodarie', a book of medical recipes with a prologue beginning, 'In the name of god almen. Ther schall be vii Chapiters in this boke.'
ff. 194r-232r: A gynaecological treatise, largely based on the Latin Compendium medicinae of Gilbertus Anglicus which in turn draws on the earlier Practica medicinae of Roger de Baron. Only the chapters on fistulas and prolapse are from the Trotula, a collection of three Latin texts associated with the famous female doctor Trota of Salerno (see Jones, 'The Sekenesse of Wymmen', 2011). The text begins, 'For as moche as ther ben manye women that haven many divers maladies and sekenesses nygh to the deth'.
Decoration:
17 diagrams of single and twin foetuses in colours inside red circles, showing foetal positions in the womb (ff. 217r-218v).
Two large initials in colours on gold grounds with partial foliate borders in colours and gold (f. 2r, 194r).
Large initials in blue with pen-flourishing in red. Paraphs in red or blue. Line-fillers in red and blue.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Medieval and Renaissance Women
Sloane Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002114830 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 2463 : Collection of medical texts, including treatises on anatomy, surgery and gynaecology - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[2453]/040-002114830
- 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_100165172496.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1424
- Date Range:
- 1st 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: Parchment.
Dimensions: 270 x 190 mm (written space: 185 x 100 mm)
Foliation: ff. 234 (ff. 1 and 234 are parchment flyleaves + 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 5 at the end).
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Rebound in 1972.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Richard Ferris, Master of the Barbers' and Surgeons' Company and Sergeant-Surgeon to Queen Elizabeth, in 1563: inscription ' . . . Richard ferris' (f. 1r): bought by Feld (see Medieval Woman's Guide (1981), p. 46).
John Feld: bought by him from Ferris for 48s and 4p (see Medieval Woman's Guide (1981) p. 46).
An inscription: 'Perfecto libro/ february 27, 1585' (f. 193v) in the same hand as numerous marginal notes.
Two recipes for the cure jaundice added in a ?16th-century hand (f. 233v)
John Allen (b. 1660?, d. 1741), physician: 18th-century inscription 'Geo (?) Alleyn' (f. 234v).
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector.
Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Publications:
- 'Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts: Sloane 2268-2496' (London: British Museum unpublished manuscript of unedited descriptions, no date), no. 2463 [available in The British Library Manuscripts Reading Room].
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. 91.
Medieval Woman's Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook, trans. with introduction by Beryl Rowland (London: Croom Helm, 1981), esp. pp. 7, 12-14, 20, 23-24, 26-28, 34, 39, 41-48 [this manuscript translated].
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 31-32, 53-54, fig. 20.
Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus, ed. by Faye Marie Getz (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. lxxi.
Monica H. Green, ‘Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts in Middle English’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 14 (1992), 53-88 (pp. 53, 61, 82).
Björn Wallner, An Interpolated Middle English Version of The Anatomy of Guy de Chauliac, 2 vols (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995-1996), Part 1: Text, Publications of the New Society of Letters at Lund, 87; Part II: Introduction, Notes, Glossary, Publications of the New Society of Letters at Lund, 89 [for an edition of the text].
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.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 1998; first publ. as Medieval Medical Miniatures, 1984), pp. 26, 40, fig. 28.
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, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 292, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), II, 455-568.
Peter Murray Jones, ‘Image, Word, and Medicine in the Middle Ages’, in Visualising Medieval Medicine and Natural History,1200-1550, ed. by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 1-24 (p. 3 n. 6).
Monica H. Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 192, n. 83, 285, n.120.
Peter Murray Jones, 'The Sekenesse of Wymmen' (University of Cambridge website: Generation to Reproduction, July 2019), online at https://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/features/sekenesse-of-wymmen [accessed 5.5.2022].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)