A Fifteenth-Century Medical Handbook in York Minster Library (YML, XVI. E. 32). Part 4 - a blog by Dr Rebeca Cubas-Peña

Part IV: Reception

In the same manner that modern students take notes in the margins of their study books or come across other students’ annotations in library books, earlier readers marked and adapted the texts they read as a method of assimilating and internalising new and useful material. Through these notes, readers show an engagement and interaction with the texts which represent a natural process of reading. This engagement is manifested not only in the form of annotations but also in the number of devices that readers have added to their books in order to facilitate their navigation and understanding.

Numerous post-medieval owners of the York medieval manuscript engaged with the volume. It is worth mentioning that if it were not for these additions modern readers would think that the manuscript was barely read, since except for a few dog-ears is in excellent condition. Knowing the disposition of a medical book might have been indeed helpful, if not necessary, to a medical practitioner. Given the practicality of such subject matter, the fact that herbals or treatises on simples were copied in alphabetical order, that the headings of the recipes were copied both in the body of the text and the margins, or that several collections of recipes followed the so-called ‘head-to-toe’ principle would have been convenient to the practitioner in need of specific information to heal a patient, especially if in haste.

An incomplete table of contents concerning a collection of recipes written by a sixteenth-century reader (fols. 81v-82r)

Marginal annotations

The margins of the York medical manuscript reveals the presence of annotators who, by adding tables of contents, headings, recipes or comments, have contributed notably to give the manuscript its present form. The majority of these annotations, which were mostly written in the sixteenth century and aimed at facilitating the location of specific information, were written to find relevant recipes fast. How did they do that? By copying the heading of the remedies next to the recipes they refer to. For instance, folios number 104v and 105r show the following marginal titles (in original Middle English here) next to their corresponding remedy: ‘to do a wey here’ to remove hair; ‘for þe quarteyne’ to treat the quartan fever, i.e. an intermittent fever with attacks every third day; ‘for þe blody flyxʒe’ (called the ‘blody menysoun’ in the text) to help with the menstrual flow; ‘for bleynys in þe face’ to remove pimples or sores on the face; ‘for þe goute’ to relieve the strong pain suffered by arthritis in the bones of the haunch (called the ‘goute sciatik’ in the text); and ‘for þe morymalle’ to treat a bad sore (mormal), in this case in the leg. [1]

Post-medieval recipe titles in the margins (fols. 104v-105r)

Some of these indexing notes are of significant interest because they mention individuals who are related to the readers of the manuscript. Thus, there is a very interesting note which points to a remedy that seemed to be good for the stone or calculus that an old man called Johannes Busshy had.

A marginal note (‘for þe ston þat olde Johannes busshy hath’, fol. 157v)

This same annotator, who was probably a medical practitioner and an early owner of the manuscript, also annotated a recipe for a long-time headache which is easily found due to a marginal manicule and a bottom-page note that reads: ‘a medicine for my wife´s headache proved true’. These annotations would have helped the reader to spot successful remedies without difficulty, whilst underlining their efficiency for future readers and owners.

A marginal note concerning a recipe which is also marked by a manicule (fol. 92r)

Other annotations were added to transcribe, translate or explain Middle English terms. A very prolific sixteenth-century annotator drew two carets at the beginning of a word that alludes to the herbe paralisis, a plant that earned this title due to its effectiveness in healing gout, paralysis and rheumatism. The annotator wrote a marginal explanatory note which indicated that paralisis was the cowslip or primrose.

An annotator explains that ‘paralisis is þe cowslope or primerose’ (fol. 87r)

There is a more consistent and modern annotator who marked the margins of the manuscript with notes and drawings written in pencil. At first, I suspected that these annotations may have been written by Elizabeth Brunskill, a former York Minster librarian who did a comprehensive study of the volume that includes a full transcript of the manuscript, a list of contents, and relevant bibliographical material, among other things. [2]

Elizabeth Brunskill´s transcription of a table of contents in the York medical manuscript (Add. MSS 198, fol. 79a)

She also developed an analysis of the Liber de Diversis Medicinis, the source text of the third Booklet of the York medical manuscript. Brunskill compared the booklet to Margaret Ogden’s celebrated edition of the treatise and wrote some notes on the margins of her transcript. [3] Due to this exhaustive analysis of the volume and the modernity of the script, I assumed that she was responsible for the pencil annotations in the manuscript. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone took notes on the book once it entered the library.

What seems more obvious is that whoever wrote these pencil annotations intended to gloss and transcribe words whose spelling or meaning were not easily understood. The annotator transcribed the Middle English word ‘loue ache’ as ‘lovage’, a plant in the parsley family ― normally Levisticum officinale ― used in medicine and cooking. This person also transcribed and translated the word ‘cropen’, which as glossed means ‘crept’ and appears in the heading of a recipe for a worm that is bred or crept into a man´s body.

An annotator glossing the word ‘lovage’ in pencil (fol. 54r)

Cropen glossed as ‘+cropen i.e. crept’ in the margins (fol. 80r)

Marginal drawings and bookmarks

Alongside these marginal notes, the York medical manuscript contains several finding aids in the form of manicules, drawings of circles and crosses, illustrations and bookmarks. The annotations already discussed include a manicule and a black cross, but there are other extraordinary examples worth mentioning. For instance, there is a drawing of a tongue next to a recipe for the man who has lost his speech, or a drawing of a heart that was drawn in the middle of the word ‘palsy’ and points at oil for palsy, cold gout and other cold causes.

A marginal drawing of a tongue (fol. 22r)

A drawing of a heart next to a recipe for ‘Oyle mad for palesye for cold goutys & for oþir colde causys’ (fol. 156r)

My personal favourite, however, (which I need to include for obvious reasons!) is the dead bovine which someone drew next to a charm against the plague, or death, among cattle. This excellent illustration, which depicts the animal expiring, shows the bovine on its back breathing its last breath (look how it comes out of its mouth!) with an overhanging cloud. 

A drawing of a dead bovine next to a charm against the plague (fol. 166r)

Marginal notes and illustrations are not the only finding devices in the York medical manuscript: the edges of some leaves contain bookmarkers. Unlike modern bookmarks, which consist of external elements placed amongst the pages of a book, medieval bookmarkers were made by modifying the original appearance of the folios of the manuscript. Finger-tabs, for example, were made by cutting the fore-edge of the leaf and passing the tab through the slit.

A finger-tab (fol. 65)

There is also a thread to the fore-edge in the sixth booklet of the manuscript which might have had originally a piece of fabric or other material hanging out the page and is probably marking the opening of the Prophecies of Esdras: a text that predicted the future based on the day of the week in which Christmas day fell.

A string to mark the folio (fol. 119r)

Together with the medieval and post-medieval annotations and finding aids that have been preserved in the margins of the York medical manuscript, these bookmarks bear testimony to how the manuscript was vastly read and annotated after its production; demonstrating that the volume has been both valued and useful through the centuries.

[1] The dictionaries used to translate the medical and herbal terms have been the Middle English Dictionary https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary and J. Norri, Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English , 1375-1550: Body Parts, Sicknesses, Instruments, and Medicinal Preparations (Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2016).

[2] Her notes are in loose paper in York, York Minster Library, Add. MSS 198.

[3] M. S. Ogden, ed., The ‘Liber De Diversis Medicinis’ in the Thornton Manuscript. MS. Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2 (London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1969).