Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 878
Medical treatises
Contents
Language(s): Middle English, with dialectal features that are locatable to East Anglia [see McKitterick and Beadle (1992), p. 5]
The text contains a horoscope (pp. 16-34).
The collection mostly concerns medical recipes but ends with different types of recipes, including:
- Magical recipes (p. 102), including methods to obtain a woman's secrets by placing an amber or jet stone on her body during sleep and to prevent a goose's chickens from dying by giving them water to drink in which bread or parchment inscribed with the Lord's Prayer has been washed.
- Gynaecological recipes (pp. 103-104), including methods to help a couple become pregnant, a method for establishing whether the cause for unwanted childlessness in a couple lies with the man or the woman, and methods for establishing the sex of an unborn child.
- Cosmetic recipes (pp. 103-104), including methods to dye hair black and blond ('gold') and remove blemishes.
- Repellants (pp. 102-103, 105), including methods to stop dogs from barking at you, drive flies out of a house, and keep wolves from a piece of land.
- Household/Practical recipes (pp. 105-106), including methods to open a silver ring by adding mercury to it and join to pieces of meat together.
- Equestrian medicine (p. 105-106), including recipes for healing ailments in horses.
- Horticultural instructions (p. 107), including methods for harvesting grapes and cherries all year round.
McKitterick and Beadle (1992), p. 3, point out that many of the recipes on pp. 59-107 also appear in a collection of recipes in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91 [The Lincoln Thornton Manuscript], entitled 'Liber de diversis medicinis' but this is not the case for most of the specified non-medical recipes.
The collection contains a previously unidentified selection of recipes from John Arderne's Treatises of fistula in ano : haemorrhoids, and clysters: 'Sanguis veneris' (pp. 156-157; 'Valens of Scabius' (pp. 158-159); 'Valence of Wourmot' (pp. 159-160).
Full transcription.
The recipe that precedes the charm instructs the patient to hold both hands in holy water.
Latin version of the Middle English text on pp. 183–188.
The tract is written in Latin but some recipes include English terms for ingredients, including: 'figys', 'raysynys', 'herb yve' (p. 121.
Full transcription.
Full transcription.
Full transcription.
The text explains how to make powder from a snake's heart and use it to heal all wounds, become invulnerableto injuries, heal leprosy, make foes flee and gain the affection and help of friends, become appointed, identify thieves and stolen objects, become invulnerable to poison, become invisible, and loved by all.
The collection features recipes for a previously unidentified selection of recipes from John Arderne's Treatises of fistula in ano : haemorrhoids, and clysters 'Sanguis veneris' (pp. 156-157; 'Valens of Scabius' (pp. 158-159); 'Valence of Wourmot' (pp. 159-160); In his recipe for a 'Valence of wormod', Arderne reports how he used the medicine to heal a fisherman from London who had injured his arm on a sharp iron near the monastery of the Carmelites. However, the version in Pepys MS 878 has been updated with what appear to be another physician's testimonies. This physician states that 'this medicine I have often used and praised because with it I healed a sheriff at Bristol who endured a puncture wound in the muscle of his left arm from a small dagger as he separated two (fighting) men and was close to death because of the pain, swelling, burning, and cramp and because a miserable cure from a barber who put tight rolls of linen in the wound and put diachylon on top of it. I removed his cure and replaced it with 'valence of wormwood' and 'sanguis verenis' and God healed him shortly after that - according to the practice of William Elmeden [Elmedon] and the mayor of Rockingham.' ['þis I have mekyll vsed and loued for with it I helyd a shirreff at Bristowe þe which of þe prikyng of a small dagger poynt as he departyd .ij. men in the lacert of is lyfte arme almost for payn bolnyng and brynnyng and crampe was ny dede thorow an onappy cure of a barbowre þe which putte harde tentys of lyne in þe wounde and layde diaculium layde aboue is cure put a way valcen sanguis verenis putte in a lityll while god helyd hym. With þis cure god helyd. Secundum Wylliam Elmeden and þe mayre of Rokyngham'].
Full transcription.
Full transcription.
Full transcription.
Full transcription.
The note, if correct, suggests that a quire of eight leaves (a quaternion) is missing from the manuscript as it was in the early 16th century.
Full transcription; added in the late 15th or early 16th century.
Physical Description
Early modern (17th- or 18th-century) pagination with modern foliation of the flyleaves:
i-iii, 1-192, iv-[v]
Numbering in black ink in the upper right-hand corners of the rectos in the hand of Daniel Waterland (1683-1740), Master of Magdalene College; except for the numbers 'i' (pastedown on the inside of the upper cover), 'ii', 'iii', and 'iv' that have been written in pencil on the paper pastedown on the inside of the upper cover and flyleaves at the beginningby a modern hand (f. [v] is an unfoliated flyleaf that follows f. iv).Collation
- Quire 18 (pp. 1-16)
- Quire 210+1 (pp. 17-38: 11th leaf inserted, pp. 37-38)
- Quire 38 (pp. 39-54)
- Quire 410 (pp. 55-74)
- Quires 5-68 (pp. 75-106)
- Quire 710 (pp. 107-126)
- Quires 8-108 (pp. 127-174)
- Quire 118+1 (pp. 175-192: 9th leaf inserted, pp. 191-192)
Condition
Layout
130-120 × 90 mm. Ruled in ink, frame and line ruling. Mainly single columns, except pp. 113-116 which have three columns. Usually 27 lines to the page, but sometimes 29 or 31, written below top line.
Hand(s)
pp. 1-38 and pp. 42-192 have been copied by one scribe in an Anglicana Formata occasionally written more cursively. It appears that the scribe worked on this manuscript over a longer period of time.
pp. 39-41 have been copied by a scribe working in a small cursive hand with both Secretary and Anglicana features.
pp. 110-142 are a palimpsest. They feature a fourteenth-century liturgical text in Gothic textura that has been largely washed off to create blank leaves for this manuscript.
Decoration
Small and large (1-2 lines) plain red initials.
1 large (3 line) red initial with penwork decoration in black ink inside the letter and pen-flourishing in black ink extending into the margin on p. 108.
Paraphs in red ink.
Underlining in red ink.
Additions
Marginal additions to medical treatises and recipes in 15th-, 16th- and possibly early 17th-century hands. These usually concern the names of recipes or their ingredients, but there are two longer additions: an astrological note in the lower margin of p. 16: ‘because the time is very neare exactly knowne how longe a woman goeth from þe time of conception: yf it be knowne in what moneth a man is borne and what signe, by counting backward the time of a womans aging, ye may count þe moneth [...]’; and a lists of humours and planets and their relationship to organs in the human body in the lower margin of p. 111. Both texts were probably added in the 16th century.
Note of the manuscript's contents and a table of contents by of Daniel Waterland (1683-1740), Master of Magdalene College, on on p. iii recto.
Quire numbers in pencil in the lower right-hand corners of the first rectos of quires added by a modern hand.
Binding
17th-century mottled brown calf with a blank coat of arms inscribed with the name of Samuel Peppys on the front cover, and Pepys' coat of arms gold-stamped on the rear cover; red-speckled edges.
Binding height: 165mm; width: 130mm; depth: 35mm.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Acquired before 1700 by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) , naval officer and diarist: no. 6802.83 in Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ (c. 1697); f. iii verso features an engraving of his portrait with the motto: 'Mens cujusque is est Quisque' and 'Sam. Pepys. Car. et. Iac. Angl. Regib. A. Secretis. Admiraliae' by R. White ['R. W. sculp.'], c. 1690; f. iv recto a paper pastedown with Pepys's bookplate engraved with two anchors and the motto 'Mens cujusque is est Quisque'.
Acquired by Magdalene College, Cambridge upon the death of John Jackson (d. 1724) : in his will (The National Archives, PROB 1/9, Will of Samuel Pepys, Codicil, 13th May 1703), Pepys left a bequest of approximately 3000 manuscripts and printed books to Magdalene College and instructed his nephew John Jackson to arrange for this but they only came to the college after Jackson died. Jackson respected the instructions given in the codicil to the will as can be evidenced from Magdalene College Archives A/41/1: an indenture between Anne Jackson, widow and executrix of John Jackson (nephew and residuary legatee of Samuel Pepys), and the Master and Fellows being a deed of covenant as to providing a Library at the College for the reception of the collection of the books and papers bequeathed to the College by Samuel Pepys, 1 June 1724. It is here that the manuscript's current shelfmark 'No 878' was inscribed in red ink on the inside of the front cover (p. i).
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
Visitors to Magdalene College who wish to consult Special Collections material are required to apply to the Pepys Library in advance of their visit. For information on eligibility and admission procedures see: Magdalene College: Pepys Library.
Bibliography
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Treatises of fistula in ano, haemorrhoids, and clysters Early English Text Society,
Original series, Arderne, John (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1910)
Bibliotheca Pepysiana: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Samuel Pepys, James, M.R. (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1914)
Notes and Events Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Kelly, Michael (16, 2, 186-192, 1961)
Medical Manuscripts in Middle English Speculum, Robbins, Rossell Hope (45, 3, 393-415, 1970, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2853500)
Prolegomena to a literary geography of later medieval Norfolk Regionalism in Late
Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, Beadle, Richard (89-108, 1991)
Manuscripts (Medieval) Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, McKitterick, RosamondBeadle, Richard (Cambridge, V.i, Brewer, 1992)
Vernacular literacy in late-medieval England: The Example of East Anglian Medical
Manuscripts, Jones, M. Claire (Glasgow, 2000)
"A Good Reder": The Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy, Instruction,
Publics,
and Manuscripts, Griffin, Carrie (Cork, 2006)
The Middle English Wise Book of philosophy and astronomy: a parallel-text edition:
edited from
London, British Library, MS Sloane 2453 with a parallel text from New York, Columbia
University, MS Plimpton
260 Middle English texts, Griffin, Carrie (Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013)
Uroscopy in Middle English: A Guide to the Texts and Manuscripts Studies in medieval
and renaissance history, Tavormina, M. Teresa ([Michigan?], 2014)
Men's Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England The Palgrave handbook of infertility
in history, Rider, Catherine (London, 273-290, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Eating Words and Burning Them The Power of Destruction in Medieval English Charm Texts
Zerstörung von Geschriebenem: Historische und transkulturelle Perspektiven, Hindley, Katherine Storm (Berlin, 359-372, De Gruyter, 2019)
Funding of Cataloguing
Wellcome
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Abbreviations
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