Practical use of medical manuscripts
Dr Kathleen Walker-Meikle
What makes a medieval medical manuscript “practical”? Is it a question of genre or a judgement that can only be made on a manuscript by manuscript basis? How do we ascertain contemporary and later readership and use? Is the term ‘practical’ at all useful when examining medieval manuscripts? We started this workshop series with two luxury illuminated recipe collections (Wellcome 626 & Osler’s François II de Rohan ms), how would we classify them? I will be drawing on my work on recipes collections and their later adaptions, poisons literature, and in particular an animal materia medica text, translated from the Arabic, extant in manuscripts ranging from the 13th to the 16th century.
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Dr Kathleen Walker-Meikle's research interests focus on the relationship between animals and humans, particularly in medicine and natural history. She received her PhD from University College London, and published Medieval Pets (Boydell & Brewer, 2012), the first social and cultural study of companion animals in the medieval period. Since then, Kathleen has focused on the history of medicine and its intersections with animals, from snake bites to materia medica. Kathleen has published on medieval toxicology, pharmacology, and disease, and her most recent publication is: ‘Animals: Their Use and Meaning in Medieval Medicine’, in Iona McCleery, ed., A Cultural History of Medicine in the Middles Ages (Bloomsbury, 2021).
(Note: session will last an hour).
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