Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Early-Medieval Medicine

Featured here is a modern translation of a medieval herbal, preceded by a study showing how this technical treatise on herbs was turned into a literary curiosity. The transformation began with its first translation in 1864, one that continues to affect how this and other early-medieval medical texts are read.

As a counterweight, here the medieval text is read as an example of technical writing (i.e., intended to convey instructions/information), not as literature. With a skilled audience in mind, it is intended to be used by persons with ability to diagnose and treat medical conditions and knows or is learning how to follow its instructions. For that reason, while working on the translation, specialists in relevant fields were asked to shed light on its terse wording, for example herbalists and physicians. Unlike many current studies, this work discusses the Herbarium and other medical texts in Old English as part of a tradition developed throughout early-medieval Europe associated with monasteries and their libraries. The contours of this edition replicate the original, updated to reflect new scholarship and new findings, particularly concerning Oswald Cockayne, nineteenth-century philologist who was the first to translate the Old English medical texts for the modern world.

The intended audience is scholars in cross-cultural fields; that is, with roots in one field and branches in several, such as nineteenth-century or medieval studies, as well as historians of herbalism, medicine, pharmacy, botany, and of the Western Middle Ages very broadly and inclusively defined.