Irish medical manuscripts in CELT: An overview of

electronic text editions

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Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• Over 100 medical manuscripts in early modern Irish (c. 1350-1700) are extant in Irish, Scottish and British libraries. In Scotland alone, there are 35 mss with c. 4800 pages of text.

• Winifred Wulff who published widely in this area from 1926 to 1942 listed 56 unedited medical mss in her Rosa Anglica (London 1929).

• Images of medical mss from many collections, including RIA, NLI, TCD, NLS are available at ISOS (Irish Script on Screen) in DIAS, directed by Prof. Pádraig Ó Macháin, and catalogued by Prof. Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• Many mss were never edited or translated. Ireland’s and Scotland’s vernacular translations of the major medical corpora are still lying unexamined on library shelves today.

• Studied at the centre of medical scholarship, in the great European centres of learning, the canonical texts were brought to Ireland, and scrutinised by Irish physicians from medical families who also trained students in their schools. These mss bear witness to the medical practice of physicians in the Gaelic world, allowing fascinating insights into the history of medicine and health in society.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• One of the earliest mss (RIA 23 F 19) was in the possession of the Ó Céiríns of Ballyrohan, Co. Clare. It is an Irish translation, dated 1352, of the gynaecological text known as the Trotula. This was derived from materials going back to the medical school of Salerno, a centre of Arab influence after the demise of the Roman Empire.

More about it here or read the Irish text here.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

Under 30 mss have been edited in part or as a whole by scholars such as W. Cameron Gillies, Whitley Stokes, Lilian Duncan, James Carney, Gearóid Mac Niocaill, and Brian Ó Cuív (last article publ. in 1985); 13 texts were edited by Winifred Wulff 1926-1942; one herbal and a translation by her on treating wounds remain unpublished.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• Wulff stressed above all the terminological and lexicographical value of John of Gaddesden's Rosa Anglica (c.1314):

• Its 'value ... from an Irish point of view is chiefly lexicographical. It is representative of a vast body of material hitherto uninvestigated which contains great resources in scientific and medical terminology and expression.'

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• For his edition of Regimen Sanitatis, James Carney suggested a wider readership:

• 'If this fourteenth century Regimen Sanitatis of Maginus, a doctor of Milan, were to make a further claim, it would be on the student of the social history of the period: a rule for the preservation of health, it has necessarily a broader compass than works on the treatment of specific diseases or conditions.'

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

• The Regimen Sanitatis was composed by Magninus Mediolanensis c. 1330, and dedicated to Andreas de Florentina (=Ghino Malpighi), then bishop of Arras. It contains material taken from Arnaldus de Villanova (d. c. 1311). Other authorities mentioned are Galen, Haly, Averroes, Avicenna, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Avemzoar and Rabbi Venatus.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

Texts on CELT on medicine and science:Regimen Sanitatis (H. Cameron Gillies); w.

Intro & English translation [online 2002]• Rosa Anglica (W. Wulff); E. tr. [online

2005]• Regimen na Sláinte; 3 vols (J. Carney) w.

Latin text. No Engl. tr. [online 2009-10]• A mediaeval handbook of gynaecology and

midwifery (W. Wulff) with Latin text. No Engl. tr. [online 2011]

• On Wounds (W. Wulff) [online 2011]

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

Texts on CELT on medicine and science:

• A Tract on the Plague (W. Wulff); Engl. tr. [online 2011]

• Contra Incantationes (W. Wulff); Engl. tr. [online 2011]

• Two medical Fragments (W. Wulff) [online 2012]; no Engl. tr.

• On Wounds: Wulff’s unpublished E. tr. scheduled for 2012 courtesy of the ITS.

Irish medical manuscripts in CELT

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• Converted into HTML for browsing. • Fully searchable.• XML master files available on the

website. • Where spelling has been normalized,

editorial changes are marked via encoding.