Winner of the Best First Monograph from the International Society for
the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) 2021.
An examination of the Old English medical collections, arguing that
these texts are products of a learned intellectual culture.
Four complete medical collections survive from Anglo-Saxon England.
These were first edited by Oswald Cockayne in the nineteenth century and
came to be known by the names Bald's Leechbook, Leechbook III, the
Lacnunga, and the Old English Pharmacopeia. Together these works
represent the earliest complete collections of medical material in a
western vernacular language.
This book examines these texts as products of a learned literary
culture. While earlier scholarship tended to emphasise the relationship
of these works to folk belief or popular culture, this study suggests
that all four extant collections were probably produced in major
ecclesiastical centres. It examines the collections individually,
emphasising their differences of content and purpose, while arguing that
each consistently displays connections with an elite intellectual
culture. The final chapter considers the fundamentally positive
depiction of doctors and medicine found within literary and
ecclesiastical works from the period and suggests that the high esteem
for medicine in literate circles may have favoured the study and
translation of medical texts.