This thesis is an edition of a manuscript of medical remedies, MS X3346 (now stored in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington) which belongs to the Medical Historical Society of the Auckland branch of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. The manuscript is one of five known copies of a compilation by a sixteenth century Benedictine monk, John of Feckenham, who became Abbot of Westminster during the reign of Mary Tudor. In the dedication to the manuscripts, which is almost identical in each, the Abbot states that 'This Book of Sovereign Medicines' Named for convenience throughout this edition, 'The Book of Sovereign Medicines' was collected by him for 'the poor who have not at all times the learned physicians at hand'. The scribal handwriting, and the names of various people in MS X3346, indicate that it was penned between 1665 and 1675, or about seventy-five years after Feckenham's death. Research into the life of the compiler was undertaken, as was an overview of the medical ideas of the period, together with a study of the popular genre of which the Abbot's work was an example. Also included in this thesis is a Provenance of the manuscript, a description of its state, a comparison of it with the other known copies, and the story of its donation to the Medical Historical Society. A transcript of the manuscript was prepared, maintaining the scribal spelling, punctuation and capitalization as accurately as possible. Following this, a modernized version was made, aiming at a readable text. The layout of the original manuscript and the transcript was maintained as far as possible, to facilitate keying of annotations and comments to the text. The Oxford English Dictionary was used as the standard for spelling and grammar, and an attempt was made to conform to the principles used by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor in the compact edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works. A glossary was prepared defining herbs, ingredients, medical terms and so on. Annotations to the remedies indicate the same or similar examples in other works, especially in the Folger edition of 'This Booke of Sovereigne Medicines' (edited by E.R.Macgill in 1990). Also in the annotations are explanations of words and phrases specific to a remedy, and identification of many of the people mentioned in the work. Quotations from authors of the time of Chaucer to the modern day are included in the glossary and annotations to help define and illustrate medical terms and ingredients perhaps not familiar today. Early herbals were studied, especially those of William Turner and John Gerard. As Eleanour Sinclair Rohde (The Old English Herbals, p.98) has pointed out, Gerard was justly condemned by critics of his own time as well as modern ones for 'having used Dr Priest's translation of Dodoen's ⎂Pemptades⎁ without acknowledgement'. Nevertheless, this editor, like Rohde, has found such pleasure in Gerard’s delightful language, his descriptions of plants, with their habitats and their virtues, that many quotations from his Herball have been included. There is an index of authors and quotations, and also a general index to the contents of the modern version.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/276865 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Lalor, Daphne E. (Daphne Elaine) |
| Publisher | ResearchSpace@Auckland |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated., http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm, Copyright: The author |
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