5 - Medical texts of the Anglo-Saxons

Summary

Of the surviving medical texts demonstrably compiled by Anglo-Saxons in Old English and in Latin, the Old English ones are on the whole earlier and more voluminous than those in Latin, and for the most part are more useful for an understanding of Anglo-Saxon medical practices and beliefs. Because they are in English, we cannot suppose that they are mere ‘mindless’ copies of Latin sources; rather, they must have been processed through the minds of their translators and compilers, and so should give us a clearer insight into the workings of the English minds that put them together. However, Latin texts assembled by English workers are also of value for our understanding of their medicine. Almost all of those in Old English were collected by Oswald Cockayne in his Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, published in three volumes in the Rolls Series between 1864 and 1866. The industry and learning of this remarkable man are truly amazing and everything done since in the field of Anglo-Saxon medicine has been done in the shadow of Cockayne's achievement.

The oldest surviving book of medicine in Old English is a beautifully made manuscript, now London, BL, Royal 12. D. xvii. It appears to have been written about 950 at Winchester and to be a copy of a lost exemplar which may have been composed about fifty years earlier in the last years of the reign of Alfred the Great. It is tempting to suppose it to be a product of the literary efforts of Alfred's court, but we have not enough information to do other than guess.