Mediaeval Medical Miniatures

Jones, Peter Murray

The British Library

Drawing on the wealth of medical illustration to be found in medieval manuscripts, Peter Murray Jones traces the history of medieval medicine, the artistic traditions which shaped its depiction and the changing attitudes and beliefs of both medical and artistic practitioners. This beautifully produced book is a revised, colour-illustrated version of the long out-of-print Medieval Medical Miniatures first published by The British Library in 1984.
Some of the manuscripts illustrated are famous because of the quality of their design and splendour of illumination, but most medical illustration was not work of such refinement and consequently has been largely ignored by historians of art. For the historian of medicine, however, these ordinary manuscripts are just as interesting as the select few because they tell so much of what it must have been like to study and practise the healing arts in medieval times, as well as providing evidence of the changing role of the book in medicine.
The colour reproductions presented here reveal the extraordinary range and diversity in subject-matter and style of these illustrations. Peter Murray Jones provides the context, considering each picture as an integral part of the manuscript in which it is found, and interpreting it as a document of medical history.

Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Drawing upon a surprising wealth of evidence found in surviving manuscripts, this book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care.Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late medieval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders. This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.

The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England (Health and Healing in the Middle Ages, 5) (Middle English Edition)

History

Europe

York Medieval Press

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