Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 147/197
Medical treatises
Contents
Physical Description
18th or 19th-century pagination
[i] + 1-62 | 63-174 + [ii]
Numbering in brown ink in the upper right-hand corner of the rectos.
Collation
- Quire 16 (pp. 1-14)
- Quire 28 (pp. 15-30)
- Quire 36 (pp. 31-42)
- Quire 48 (pp. 43-58)
- Quire 54-2 (pp. 59-62: 3rd and 4th leaves after p. 62 excised) |
- Quires 6-128 (pp. 63-174)
16 28 36 48 54-2 (3rd and 4th leaves excised) | 6-128
Additions
Citation of John 1:6 ('fuit homo missus a deo cui nomen erat') added to p. 15 and p. 115 in a 15th-century hand.
Quire signatures ('1-12') in the bottom right-hand corner of the recto side of the first leaf of each quire, written in pencil by a hand of the 19th/20th century.
Binding
18th- or 19th-century panelled brown leather binding with two triple-blind tooled frames.
Binding height: 255 mm; width: 185 mm; depth: 25 mm.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Walter of Elveden (d. in or before 1360) , ecclesiastic and astrologer, associated with Edmund Gonville and William Bateman, the founders of the Gonville and Caius college: perhaps his donation recorded in a fragmentary inscription on p. 1: 'ex dono magistri Walteri El[ueden]' (for further biographical information, see Hall (2006), pp. 240-241; and Keith Snedegar, 'Walter Eleveden (d. in or before 1360)', Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography (23 September 2004) [accessed 17 February 2023]). This identification is supported by later additions that indicate that the manuscript circulated in Suffolk. These consist of administrative notes concerning debts and payments in the lower margins of pp. 79 [dated to 5 Henry IV, i.e. 1403/04], 112, 127, 131, 147, 149, 153 and 155, including the name of a vicar in Suffolk: 'Johannes Cretyngg', 'Johannes Hevenyngham vic. Suff.', 'Robertus [B]oye', 'Robertus Sparwe', and 'Willelmus Attegap'. The manuscript has also many added medical recipes in Middle English in an East Anglian dialect (see LALME I:63); these annotations indicate that Elveden donated the manuscript as it is, i.e.: its two parts were bound together when he gave it, although the first part already had some annotations made prior to that.
Acquired by Gonville and Caius College before 1697, in which year the manuscript was recorded as no. 970 in Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, cum indice alphabetico (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1697). Their armorial bookplate with the classmark '197 - 147' inscribed pasted on the inside of the upper cover (with a reference to the printed catalogue written above it) and the number '147' inscribed at the top on p. 3.
Part 1 [Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 147/197, pp. 1-62]
Contents
Language(s): Latin texts with added recipes in Middle English
Part of the original manuscript.
Written in the margins and blank spaces by hands of the late 14th century/early 15th century and 15th-century that also added various recipes and charms to the manuscript's second part. They address the following:
- p. 8: for a medicine called 'D-' (rubric partially erased)
- p. 9: for a medicine called 'Dia-' (rubric partially erased)
- p. 13: for a medicine called 'Dia-' (rubric partially erased)
- p. 20: for a plaster called 'Gracia dei Minor'
- p. 21: for a plaster of some sort (rubric erased)
- p. 22: the 'Tres boni fratres' charm for wounds
- p. 36: for a salve for an unspecified purpose (perhaps aching breasts), for an unguent for wounds (last two entries; for rest, see recipes added in Middle English)
- p. 49: for an unspecified purpose, two for wounds (left-hand column)
Full transcription. Added in the 14th or 15th century. Faded, but legible with UV light.
Written in the margins and blank spaces by two hands from the late 14th century/early 15th century and 15th century that also added various recipes to the manuscript's second part. They address the following:
- p. 19: for a persistent headache ('For þe hed ake þat hat lastid longhe')
- p. 23: for scabs, for drawing out a thorn or piece of iron
- p. 24: for eye pain ('hurtyng of hynen'), for migraine, for eye-pain, for cataract ('web in a hye'), for eye ailments and migraine ('For hynen þat sekenen in hed for peyne of mygrey'), for sore-eyes, for saucefleme, for freckles, two for aching or swollen limbs
- p. 25: six for festered or burning gout, for bite of a wild dog ('For bytyng of a wod hond'), for swollen breasts, for aching breasts, for swollen breasts, for breasts (unspecified), for swollen legs or other limbs
- p. 35 (right-hand column): for swelling arising from bloodletting, for removing dead flesh, four for generation of pus in a wound/sore ('For rankelyng'), two for the fester (including the last of the previous treatments for pus)
- p. 36: for canker, for canker in the mouth, for canker and fester and other sores that cause bad breath, for toothache, for fester, for festering wounds, for aching breasts (for last two, see recipes added in Latin)
- p. 38: for vomiting
- p. 42: for gout
- p. 43: for a 'hot malady', for healing a wound, for warts
- p. 44: for bruising, for chest and heart pain, for ?injury to testicles/genitals ('For a man þat hait lost his kynde) and is cold in his body
- p. 46: for scab
- p. 47: for the womb
- (p. 49: see recipes added in Latin)
- p. 54: for headache
Full transcription. Added in the 14th or 15th century.
Written in the margins and blank spaces by late 13th- or early 14th-century hands. One of these hands has added notes on weights and measures throughout pp. 1-62.
They address the following:
- p. 23: for a plaster called 'diaquilon', for a golden unguent ('vnguentum aureum') for 'acutas guttas', kidney stone and dropsy.
- p. 35: a note on the use of 'oleum anecium' for various ailments including headache and migraine; and a recipe for 'oximel' for purging phlegm.
- p. 44: for uncertain purposes (faded/erased, no longer legible)
- p. 49: for two syrup for uncertain purposes
- p. 56: an unguent for unstated purpose
- p. 62: for a green unguent
Partly legible due to fading of the ink and cropping of the page. Added in the 14th century.
Part of the original manuscript.
Physical Description
Collation
- Quire 16 (pp. 1-14)
- Quire 28 (pp. 15-30)
- Quire 36 (pp. 31-42)
- Quire 48 (pp. 43-58)
- Quire 54-2 (pp. 59-62: 3rd and 4th leaves after p. 62 excised)
Condition
- The first leaf (pp. 1-2) has been mostly torn away, leaving only the upper inside corner.
- The outer and upper edges of pp. 3-4 were torn but have been repaired with blank paper.
- The leaf that contains pp. 13-14 consists of two halves that have been sewn together with white thread, running vertically between the two columns of text.
- The leaf that contains pp. 15-16 has been cut in half lengthways, leaving only the inner half of the leaf.
- The leaf that contains pp. 43-44 consists of two half leaves that have been sewn together with blue thread, running vertically between the two columns of text.
- There are two parchment stubs after p. 62.
Layout
185 × 115 mm. Ruled in leadpoint, frame and ine ruling. Written in two columns. 36 lines to the page, written below top line.
Hand(s)
Written in a single hand writing in Northern Gothic Textualis Libraria.
Marginal recipes and charms added by 14th and 15th-century hands writing in Anglicana.
Decoration
Two-line initials alternately in blue and red, with penwork decoration and pen-flourishing in the opposite colour.
Paraphs in blue or red.
Added marginal drawings of a hedgehog or other creature (p. 26); and the head of a horse (x2), ejecting matter from its mouth (p. 37).
History
Part 2 [Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 147/197, pp. 63-174]
Contents
Language(s): Latin with added recipes in Middle English
Written in the margins and blank spaces by two or more hands from the 15th-century that also added various recipes and charms to the manuscript's first part. They address the following:
- p. 65: charm for ?protection during sea travel (Psalm 67:23 with a Middle English heading: 'Scribe for þe mare')
- p. 74: charm for protection during labour ('Sancta Maria mater Christi'),
- p. 98: for rupture in the testicles
- p. 99: an unguent for scabies
- p. 100: for scabies
- pp. 102-103: to make balm royal (rubric in Middle English)
- p. 106: for canker in the mouth
Written in the margins by two hands of the late 14th century or early 15th century and 15th century that also added recipes to the first part of the manuscript. They address the following:
- p. 78: for fester
- p. 80: for bruising on a wound
- p. 96: for maintaining eye-sight ('to kepyn a man his syth'), with ingredients and instructions in Latin
- p. 97: for the (?)'crek', with ingredients and instructions in Latin and Middle English
- p. 132: for canker
Full transcription. Added in the 14th century.
Full transcription. Added in the 14th century.
Physical Description
Collation
- Quires 6-128 (pp. 63-174)
Layout
155 × 115 mm. Ruled in leadpoint, frame and line ruling. Single columns. 24 lines to the page, written below top line.
Hand(s)
Written by a single hand in Gothica Northern Textualis.
Marginal recipes and charms added by 14th and 15th-century hands writing in Anglicana.
Decoration
One large, 9-line initial 'P' in blue with a gold bar along its descender with a white-pink dragon biting into it, and with a miniature inside its loop, showing a tonsured surgeon in a purple robe with a blue garment applying a trephine to the head of a patient in blue clothes and with his hands tied up behind his back.
Two-line and one-line initials alternately in blue and red with penwork decoration and pen-flourishing in the opposite colour.
Headers for sections have been rubricated in red ink.
Paraphs in red ink.
Line fillers consisting horizontal bars outlined in blue or red ink and with motifs in both colours inside them.
History
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
Visitors to Gonville and Caius College who wish to consult Lower Library material are required to apply to the Library in advance of their visit. For information on eligibility and admission procedures see: Gonville and Caius College: Library Information.
Bibliography
-
A linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English, McIntosh, AngusSamuels, M.L.Benskin, Michael (Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press,
1986)
Inventarium sive chirurgia magna Studies in ancient medicine, de Chauliac, Guy (Leiden, Brill, 1997)
Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Index of Middle
English prose, Rand Schmidt, Kari Anne (Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2001)
The Early Fellows of Gonville Hall and Their Books Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical
Society, Hall, Catherine (13, 3, 233-252, 2006)
Funding of Cataloguing
Wellcome
Digital Images
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
