The Cambridge Old English Reader

Uniquely in western Europe before 1100, Anglo-Saxon England had its own medical literature in the vernacular, and four major medical treatises in OE have survived. Much of the material in them was translated directly from Latin works and thus continued the Graeco-Roman tradition associated especially with Hippocrates and Galen (who themselves drew on traditions going back four thousand years in the Near East). It is probable that the Anglo-Saxon compilers were influenced by a ‘native’ northern European tradition as well. This may originally have been transmitted orally.

Bald's Leechbook (now London, British Library, Royal 12 D. xvii) is one of the four treatises. It is so called because a Latin colophon (concluding statement) written by the scribe declares: ‘Bald is owner of this book, which he ordered Cild to write’. Nothing is known about Bald (or indeed about Cild himself), but this ‘leechbook’ – lǣcebōc was the Anglo-Saxons’ own term for such a book – was clearly intended for use by a professional ‘leech’ (lǣce, ‘physician’).

It is a compendium of medical knowledge in two parts. The first has eighty-eight numbered chapters giving remedies for specific disorders, starting with those affecting the head and working systematically down the body (the method of the Greek physicians); the second is a more discursive and learned account of mainly internal disorders, with sixty-seven chapters. Extract (a) below is from item 2 in part one; extracts (b) and (c) are from items 12 and 65, respectively, in part two. A third part (known as Leechbook III), with seventy-six chapters, was added to the British Library manuscript but is from a separate source. All the material was probably put together in King Alfred's time (the end of the ninth century), though our copy of it was made around the middle of the tenth century, probably at Winchester.

Much can be deduced about the health and habits of the Anglo-Saxons from their medical literature. The number of entries concerned with what is termed ‘dimness (or mistiness) of the eyes’, for example, as in (a), suggests that eye ailments were especially common. Although a condition such as astigmatism may have been involved in some cases, the problem was no doubt more usually the result of infection or injury. Inflammation and irritation would be exacerbated by the smoky atmosphere inside buildings without chimneys, and unsanitary conditions would encourage the spread of a wide range of diseases.