This volume of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library gathers four of the main repositories of medical remedies from early Medieval England together with a plethora of other scattered recipes from the period. It represents a valuable addition to the already rich array of texts in the series, and one that will be of interest not only to those specialising in medieval English medicine, but also to a broader readership.
This new volume makes for compelling reading, from the encyclopaedic approach of the Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, “the greatest wealth of medical knowledge available at the time” (xviii), to the diverse collections found in Lacnunga and in Peri didaxeon, and to the concluding mosaic of miscellaneous items. One cannot but look forward to the second volume (by different authors), which will include a much-needed edition and translation of Bald’s Leechbook. Once completed, such a comprehensive collection of the medical corpus of early Medieval England will finally supersede Oswald Cockayne’s three-volume set, still important, yet outdated for contemporary scholarship.
Claudio Cataldi
The Medieval Review
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