In our collections there’s a small, jewel-like folding almanac, which is remarkable not only for its beautiful and intricate construction but also for the detailed information it contains on the medieval connections between astrology and the human body.

Folding almanacs contain densely packed information connecting health, time and the heavens. They feature astrological calendars, lunar and solar tables, diagrams of the human body, and religious feast days. They were used by medical practitioners and other people with an interest in astrology, prognostication (foretelling future events) and treating illness.

As well as this relatively recent acquisition, Wellcome Collection holds two other folding almanacs from later in the 15th century, all three of them written on parchment in Latin and produced in England. This almanac stands out because of its exquisitely embroidered silk binding, and the high artistic standard of its illustration, particularly the Zodiac Man, drawn in blue, red, crimson and gold leaf.

The astrological features of folding almanacs are key to understanding how they were used. According to historian Hilary Carey, “The folded almanac provided the texts, tables, and diagrams required by any practitioner or patient who wished to consider the planetary hours and the place of the moon in the signs before undertaking a medical procedure. This level of practice constituted the most elementary form of medical astrology.” 

Their small size and format made them highly portable, and they could be fastened at the waist with a piece of cord. The act of using one made the user an integral part of the process of discovery, as art historian Jennifer Borland explains: “The unusual manipulation necessitated by the almanacs’ form – the repeated opening and closing of folios, the folding and unfolding of the parchment – directs the user’s experience and stimulates the senses.” 

At the same time, the practical function of almanacs, and the limited timespan of the calendars within them, suggest that most were ephemeral – readily discarded and replaced – and relatively inexpensive to produce. 

This particular almanac, however, appears to be a different kind of object. Its fine artwork, high-quality parchment and intricately embroidered binding indicate that this was a valuable and prestigious item; nonetheless, it has signs of wear, suggesting that it did see some practical use. 

English folding almanac in Latin, 1415–20.

English folding almanac in Latin, 1415–20

The most striking feature of the content is a brightly painted and detailed illustration of the Zodiac Man. This figure has particular zodiac signs placed on specific parts of the body, to indicate times in the year at which it would be dangerous to practise bloodletting or perform other medical treatments on those areas. 

The Zodiac Man is a common feature of many medical almanacs and codices of the time. It’s often accompanied by the Vein Man, a diagram that shows the points on the body where blood should be let – though a Vein Man is absent from this almanac.

The most recent known owner of the almanac was the poet Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), who received it as a gift in May 1940, but most of the 600-year history of the almanac and its owners is a mystery. 

It was probably made in an English specialist workshop in the early 15th century – notable dates in the calendar include the feast of John of Beverley, an eighth-century Yorkshire saint particularly venerated by Henry V after his victory at Agincourt in 1415. 

The owner could have commissioned a conventional codex, but I think they must have been drawn to the format as well as the content. Maybe it was the must-have object of the day, or perhaps they wanted an attractive manuscript that they could wear on their body, as well as consult on the go for its astrological information. 

It could have been commissioned by a wealthy patron, male or female, as a special object, in contrast to the more workaday almanacs that were probably produced in multiple copies. The luxurious textile binding could have been made either in the workshop, as part of the process of book production, or by an embroiderer in a domestic setting.   

Use could have been made of its medical content within the household, as well as on the road or in encounters between medical practitioners and patients. Whatever the intention, this beautiful and intriguing example suggests that the folding almanac was a more versatile type of object than has previously been supposed, and could be a precious possession as well as a practical tool and source of information. 

Perhaps it is that unique combination of dynamic content and intricate construction in this enigmatic, jewel-like object that fascinated its original owner and continues to captivate and inspire all who encounter it today.

Article

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English folding almanac in Latin, 1415-20

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 The enigma of the medieval folding almanac

With its combination of rich, portable data and high-end style, this folding almanac could have been the medieval equivalent of the latest iPhone.

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The story of a medieval folding almanac and the modern artefacts it has inspired.

Modern Encounters With a Medieval Almanac

The enigma of the medieval folding almanac

Comic

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Lacking

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Ace joy

In this comic focusing on asexuality, Katie Green illustrates the queer joy of viewing one’s orientation – and oneself – as complete and whole.

Shortcoming

The mountain

The view

Pieces of joy

Ace Joy

During the first lockdown, James Morland was diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis. With face-to-face appointments impossible, he found that poetry, peppered with imagery from nature, helped him describe his symptoms and understand his phone conversations with medical staff.

After being diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis in the UK’s first coronavirus lockdown, I have received multiple text messages that follow the same urgent and auto-filled pattern:

“Dear JAMES MORLAND, your Gastroenterology appointment will now take place as a TELEPHONE CALL from one of our clinicians. Please DO NOT ATTEND THE HOSPITAL.”

Without in-person appointments, my doctors no longer press my abdomen to determine where my pains are located, and I’m left with only verbal language at my disposal. This involves techniques more readily found in the poetry I research, and my consultant’s calls also have a rhythm that needs to be deciphered. They are filled with words that seem to have been born from poetry, so perhaps in our next call we should talk of their history to make sense of my condition.

We could start with etymological roots. The pancreas means ‘all flesh’, deriving from the Greek pan (all) and kreas (flesh), though the ancient Roman physician Galen called it kalikreas, or ‘beautiful flesh’. Its beautiful fern-like shape, unfurling around my stomach, evokes the natural imagery I hear in my telephone appointments: “Calculi are present, but there are no stones within the biliary tree.”

On considering my “biliary tree”, I am taken to a natural poetic language of health. In the 18th century there was a vogue for poetry that concerned the wellbeing of body and mind, with poets offering up their ‘Invocation to Health’ (Henry Baker, 1723) and ‘Ode to Health’ (Joseph Warton, 1746).

“Its beautiful fern-like shape, unfurling around my stomach, evokes the natural imagery I hear in my telephone appointments.”

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The poetic language of health

John Armstrong, a physician and poet, took this trend to new lengths. ‘The Art of Preserving Health’, published in 1744, was a four-book medical treatise in poetic verse. For Armstrong the body is a micro-ecosystem, and in visualising it through poetry, we can further understand and appreciate its processes. He envisages the body’s blood vessels as a system of life-giving streams:

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow,

The generous stream that waters every part,

And motion, vigour, and warm life conveys

His words and metre are carefully chosen. The commas slow our reading of the “motion, vigour, and warm life”, making us pause after each word and mimicking the ebb and flow of the stream giving life to each part of the body.

 The body is a micro-ecosystem, and in visualising it through poetry, we can further understand and appreciate its processes.

“For Armstrong the body is a micro-ecosystem. He envisages the body’s blood vessels as a system of life-giving streams.”

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Armstrong’s lines allow the reader a certain metrical space to imagine this natural system of fountains and streams as their own body’s workings, just as my consultant’s calls and letters allow me to visualise the workings of my biliary system in terms of its branching trees.

In another call, my GP tells me that my blood has revealed raised liver enzyme levels, although “nothing much to worry about for now”. Though it’s hard not to follow my poets through history towards worry. If I start in ancient Greece and open Homer’s ‘Iliad’, the liver is the seat of life, with liver injuries always being fatal.

For Galen, whose medical work inspired much poetry, the liver has an innate fire and warmth that makes it the source of our veins and blood. Should I turn to Galenic medicine and fear that mine is burning too fiercely? Or should I rely on Shakespeare and see my worry as the result of these increased levels making me too “lily-livered” (‘Macbeth’) or having a “liver white as milk” (‘The Merchant of Venice’)?

These might seem far-fetched, but each are rooted in some medical truth. The liver could be said to be the seat of life, as without it my body could not survive. The energy it creates is a metaphoric fire that warms my blood, maintaining my body temperature.

“For Galen, whose medical work inspired much poetry, the liver has an innate fire and warmth that makes it the source of our veins and blood.”

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There is a rich history of poetic language that forms the foundation of modern medicine. A follow-up call with my consultation team begins with a description of these liver levels and mineral-salt build-ups, but we could have equally jointly envisioned my liver as the “dark monarch” of my body, a “giver of syrups and of poisons, regulator of salts” (Pablo Neruda, ‘Ode to the Liver’). 

Poetry’s rhymes and rhythms allow for fuller descriptions of symptomatic life. It produces a sense of the body that is not always readily apparent in medical writing, providing us with tools to define our medical predicaments and reveal the wonders of the body’s workings that lie hidden beneath them.

As our acts of medical care have become distanced, both patient and doctor could do well to communicate through the rhythms of poetry: 

“My lethargy is not ‘with deadly Sleep opprest, / Stretch’d on his Back’ at line 661 of ‘The Castle of Indolence’ this month, but there are ‘Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains, / That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins’, like at line 135 of ‘The Art of Preserving Health’.” 

For my next appointment, I will have my anthologies ready.

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When his doctors could only offer phone consultations, James Morland turned to poetry to make sense of the medical terms describing his symptoms and test results.

​​Jude Lax started noticing that her daughter struggled in certain social situations when she was two. Loud noises, crowds, and sudden changes to a plan often led to meltdowns. As her young identity became more defined, so did her feelings towards her gender. Jude explores the crossover of autism and gender identity.

I first started to notice that my child was a little different when she was around two. She started to describe herself as being ‘a daddy’ when she grew up. By the age of three, she refused to wear tights or skirts and would yank out the bobble that I put in her hair. When she watched ‘Frozen’, she was always Kristoff, never Ana or Elsa.

She actively hated the colour pink, as if it had somehow made an offence of who she was trying to be. As time went on, and the more times she refused the clothes that I presented her with, I would have to take her along to the shops. It took a while for my eyes to turn towards the boring greys and blacks of the boys’ department, away from the exciting sparkles of the girls’.

We love to be out in nature. Away from the city and looking at the horizon is our joy.

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Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

It was not just the colour of clothes that my child struggled with. She also found textures irritating. She couldn’t have the top of her arms showing. Jeans, leggings, skirts or dresses were a no-no. An embossed jumper, or one with a fussy pattern, was too much for her.

I’d decided to have a break from my career when she was born, and for the first two years of her life it was just the two of us. When I had her little brother, and she started at the local playgroup, I began to notice that there were differences in her behaviour. She got stressed out if her environment was too loud, if we changed plans at the last minute, or if too many people spoke to her at the same time.

We made mistakes, as you do when you’re a first-time parent. We would book trips to see Father Christmas at his grotto, which resulted in us being taken out of an emergency exit. A trip to a panto that started with pyrotechnics meant we had to leave after ten minutes. The trips to see grandparents or go to kids’ birthday parties, which inevitably meant lots of noise and attention in the first five minutes, resulted in a meltdown. 

A wet weekend in North Wales – it didn't stop us climbing a mountain, though!

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In the depths of lockdown one, we got the call we had been waiting for. Our daughter had been under the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for two years for suspected autism spectrum disorder (ASD). At the scheduled time, we plonked our two kids in front of the TV. We barricaded the door with snacks and set up our phone on loudspeaker. 

The child psychologist (CP) called from an empty office in Manchester city centre and delivered the news we had been expecting. Our five-year-old daughter was autistic. 

I’m not sure who suffered more on that call, the trained CP, who had spent years delivering such news to parents face to face and now had to communicate remotely without the support of body language or eye contact. Or us two tired parents, receiving the news at a time when we were trying to deal with home-schooling, the loss of my husband’s industry and the stress of me trying to finish my master’s degree.

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Weirdly, I felt relief at hearing those words. The guilt of going through a diagnostic process makes you believe you are making it all up. My daughter is a happy, bubbly, vivacious child who has so much empathy it sometimes hurts my heart to see how kind she is.

Because she doesn’t fit in to the stereotypical norms of autism (everyone is an expert when they’ve watched ‘Rain Man’), friends and family found it surprising that we had been to the GP with our concerns.

What they didn’t see was the social hangover that she had after an event, or the meltdowns on the way home from school every night. Her need to be cocooned to feel safe, or the way that she moved her body when she was winding down. How literal her mind is – it was really fun to explain what I meant by “ants in your pants”!

She learned to ride her bike at two and there has been no stopping her since.

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Now she is six, about to turn seven, and certainly knows her own style. In Superdrug at the weekend, the lady who was threading my eyebrows commented on the well-behaved child that I had with me. “Are they a boy or a girl?” she asked.

I looked over at my child for an answer. As she stood waiting for me with her short hair, backwards cap, burnt-orange boiler suit and black Crocs, I wondered why the lady needed to know. 

She asked again, and my child shrugged her shoulders and turned to me in confusion. I said, “They haven’t decided yet.” I do still use the she/her pronoun in general, as she hasn’t asked me to change that yet, although I am open to using they/them or even he/him if that’s what she decides.

As siblings, our children have always been close. They choose each other as their favourite people over everyone else. 

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LGBT Health published a report in 2019 linking diagnoses of gender dysphoria (GD) with ASD.  Although they found that more research needed to be done on the subject, in the 292,752 children who participated in the study, “Children with ASD were over four times as likely to be diagnosed with a condition indicating GD.” I do not have a scientific background, but I think it’s very interesting to see the link between the two. 

Even if the fact that she wants to be a boy is linked to her autism, it still makes her into the person that she is.

Not that I would change one tiny thing about my child. Even if the fact that she wants to be a boy is linked to her autism, it still makes her into the person that she is.

She loves the sea; the sounds and smells keep her calm for hours.

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I’m not sure what route we will have to take as she matures. I don’t know if we’ll need to be referred the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). Or if she will become comfortable as she is – a gender nonconforming female, or a demi-girl, as I’ve heard it called.

What I do know is that she loves art. She loves her friends and her family. Her mind is full of wonder, and I couldn’t be prouder of the person she is becoming. I feel pretty lucky to have a child who is trying to push all the boundaries she wants to.

I’m making it my priority in parenting her that I have all the knowledge I need when she asks me a question. I am here to reassure her that whatever she wants to be in her future is fine by me. My job is to keep her safe and let her decide who she wants to be when she is ready.

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"Photography is in her blood."

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As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

Join GP and author Gavin Francis in conversation with philosopher Havi Carel and oncologist Sam Guglani. They’ll be discussing their personal and professional experiences of living with illness, getting better and the importance of convalescence. 

The event is inspired by Gavin Francis’s new book, ‘Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence’. 

This event will be live-streamed on Wellcome Collection’s YouTube channel and available to watch afterwards. After booking a ticket, you will receive a confirmation email with joining instructions.  

You will be able to comment and ask questions live online using YouTube Live Chat and via Slido during the event. Your microphone and camera will be switched off for the whole session. 

<p>A chance to hear about and talk about ideas with others.</p>

Discussion

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Experiences of Recovery with GP Gavin Francis

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This event is British Sign Language interpreted. An interpreter will be embedded in the event stream/visible to all attendees and will interpret what is discussed into BSL for d/Deaf, hard of hearing and deafened attendees.

British Sign Language

This event will have live speech-to-text transcription which may be useful for people who are D/deaf, hard of hearing, deafened or neurodiverse. The text will be embedded in the event video window and ticketholders will also receive a link to open subtitles in a separate window.

Speech-to-text

The host and speakers will describe themselves and key visual elements they refer to, which may be useful for blind, partially sighted and neurodiverse attendees. There will not be a separate audio description track.

Audio described

Experiences of Recovery

Join GP and author Gavin Francis in conversation with philosopher Havi Carel and oncologist Sam Guglani as they discuss living with illness, getting better and the importance of convalescence.

Join Dr Teresa Hillier to hear how parents of children born with cerebral palsy in the mid-20th century took action to confront how educational inequality disadvantaged their children. 

You will learn how the medical classification of cerebral palsy as a specific condition was imprecise, resulting in children often being summarily denounced as ‘ineducable’.   

The talk reveals how emotive language and imagery were used in a nationwide campaign to raise the profile of cerebral palsy. Its success inadvertently led to individuals being portrayed as one homogenous group within popular culture. 

This perception has overshadowed the positive contributions made by parents and organisations to the improvement in knowledge and practice relating to cerebral palsy.

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Exploring Research Seminar with Dr Teresa Hillier

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Booking a ticket guarantees you entry to the online event. You will be given joining instructions in your confirmation email. If you have any access requests or requirements, for example a transcript of the event, email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Guaranteed (online)

Parent advocacy and attitudes towards cerebral palsy in the 20th century

Parent Advocacy and Attitudes Towards Cerebral Palsy in the Mid-20th Century

Join Dr Teresa Hillier to hear how parents of children born with cerebral palsy in the mid-20th century took action to confront how educational inequality disadvantaged their children.

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Researcher talk in the Viewing Room

Hear from people who have researched our collections, as they share their discoveries. They'll draw on examples from our collections to relate the stories that they've uncovered. And you’ll have a chance to ask them questions afterwards.

Exploring Research

Due to the increasing Covid-19 risk, for the safety of staff and visitors we are currently closed until further notice. We will continue to monitor the situation and government advice, and we will keep you updated on our website and social media channels. While we are closed you can still explore our collections, read our stories, and listen to our ‘Hello Happiness’ podcast online.

Our collections are an incredible resource for all kinds of research, whether you are an artist or writer looking for inspiration, an academic researcher, or just curious about something in our exhibitions.

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Wellcome Collection

What’s in our collections

What is happiness? In this five-part podcast, broadcaster and journalist Bidisha and guest presenter Moya Lothian-Mclean invite their guest speakers to explore the meaning of positive emotions.

Podcast

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Hello Happiness

Our venues at Wellcome Collection are available seven days a week. They're ideal for almost any event.

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Venue hire

In focus

Homepage

Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Wellcome Café

Wellcome Kitchen

Wellcome Shop

Due to the increasing Covid-19 risk, for the safety of staff and visitors we are closed until further notice. We will keep you updated on our website and social media channels.

We’re undertaking research with website visitors to find out some more about you and what you thought about your visit. This survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for your time!

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A free museum and library exploring health and human experience

In focus

Latest stories

Stay in the know

Wellcome collection

Finding us:

Opening times:

Today's opening times

Wellcome uses cookies.

A free museum and library exploring health and human experience

In focus

What’s in our collections

Hello Happiness

Venue hire

Latest stories

The enigma of the medieval folding almanac

Lacking

The poetic language of health

Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

Stay in the know

Wellcome collectionWellcome Collection

Finding us:

Opening times:

Today's opening times

Wellcome collection