Receipt Book, Latin: Before 1500

Collection of medical receipts in Latin: probably of English origin. (Incomplete.) All wanting after the middle of Capitulum XLVI of the second part. Margins slightly cropped in rebinding. The 3 ll. of the Index are in smaller format 13 x 41/2 cm. Written in a small semi-current gothic hand, 28-31 lines to a page. Paragraph marks and chapter numbers in red. Index Fol. 1 (red) Assit principio sancta maria meo. / Ad dolorem capitis i (red) / ... 3 De natura herbarum secundum / alphabetum (red) lxiii. Text Fol. 1 Assit principio sancta maria meo. / Ad dolorem capitis Accipe radicem edere ... 12 [Ad interficiendos mures] Si fumigatur radice vitis fugat omnia rep / [tilia] /.

Late 14th century

1 volume 3 ll. + 12 ll. 8vo. 15 x 91/2 cm. On vellum: modern red morocco binding.

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

Purchased 1918.

On the verso of the last leaf of the Index are written the names of 'Henricus Smythfeld, Thomas Aleyn' beneath a cross, in a late 15th cent. hand. The latter may perhaps be the second Thomas Aleyn, Fellow and Bursar of Merton College, Oxford, who 'died by June 1500' as stated in Emden's 'Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500' Vol. I, p. 24.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).