Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Adv. MS 72.1.2

Siobhán Barrett

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Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.2, fol. 2v: A page from the illustrated zodiac. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

This sixteenth− and seventeenth-century manuscript of vellum and paper is composed of thirteen separate sections of varying dates, bound together. The catalogue suggests that it could be the work of 81 scribes. The manuscript belonged to a renowned family of Scottish medics, the Beatons from Mull; Fergus, Neil, James, Malcolm and John Beaton have all signed their names in various places (see also the March 2024 Manuscript of the Month entry below for another codex associated with this family). Other scribes named are Donnchadh Ó Conchubhair and Coinneach mac Eoin.

Since this is a composite codex consisting of disparate manuscripts, many of which are fragmentary, it contains a wide variety of subject matter. Some interesting inclusions are: astrological and astronomical texts, one of which is an illustrated zodiac; a portion of the wisdom-text Tecosca Cormaic, in which the legendary King Cormac gives advice to his son, Cairpre; a copy of the Irish translation of Bernard of Gordon’s teaching on lovesickness (see Deborah Hayden’s July 2024 LEIGHEAS project blog); a commentary on the Old Irish medico-legal text on sick-maintenance, Bretha Crólige (see also the January 2024 Manuscript of the Month entry below); advice on what days of the month are best for bloodletting; and a medical catechism (see Hayden 2016). There is a large number remedies for ailments of every sort, including some obstetrical cures that are specifically attributed to the women of Salerno. Among the many charms that are preserved in this manuscript is one for infertility in women and in trees, instructing the practitioner to write a series of letters and symbols on some kind of material which is then tied around the neck or the woman, or around the tree:

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.2, fol. 33r1: A charm for infertililty in women and trees. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Further reading:

• Anderson, O. O. (1909), ‘Ranna an Aeir’. Revue Celtique 30: 404–16
• Bannerman, John (2015), The Beatons: A Medical Kindred in the Classical Gaelic Tradition. 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: J. Donald)
• Hayden, Deborah (2016), ‘Observations on the “Doors of Death” in a Medieval Irish Medical Catechism’, in Rosa Anglica: Reasessements, ed. by Liam P. Ó Murchú, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series, 28 (London: Irish Texts Society), pp. 26–56
• Hayden, Deborah (2019), ‘The Lexicon of Pulmonary Ailment in Some Medieval Irish Medical Texts’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 66: 105–29
• Meyer, Kuno, ed. (1909), The Instructions of King Cormac Mac Airt: Tecosca Cormaic. Todd Lecture Series 15 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co.)
• Rempt, Menna (2019), ‘“And Straightaway the Fountain of Her Blood Dried Up’ (Mark 5:29): Constructing a Template for Late Medieval Irish Obstetric Charms” (unpublished RMA thesis, Utrecht University)
• Thanisch, Eystein (forthcoming), ‘Knowing through Defining: Collections of Scientific Definitions in Gaelic Medical Manuscripts’, in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World: Vernacular Texts and Traditions, ed. by Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti (Turnhout: Brepols)

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 10 (ii) (‘The Book of the O’Lees’ or ‘The Book of Hy Brasil’)

Deborah Hayden

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Fig. 1: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 10 (ii), p. 84 (15^th century): A table from the Irish version of the Tacuini aegritudinum of Ibn Jazlah (d. 1100), on diseases of the female generative organs. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

This vellum manuscript, comprising 45 folios in total, has had an intriguing afterlife since it was first copied by an anonymous scribe in the fifteenth century – possibly the year 1434, which is written in a late hand on the margin of p. 76. According to the seventeenth-century historian Roderic O’Flaherty, a contemporary of his by the name of ‘Morogh O’Ley’ (Murchadh Ó Laidhe) claimed to have been forcibly carried off by boat to the imaginary island of ‘O’Brasil’, thought by some to be located to the west of the Aran islands. Having stayed there for two days, he was returned to the mainland and, some seven or eight years later, ‘began to practise both chirurgery and phisick, and so continues ever since to practise, tho’ he never studyed nor practised either all his life time before’. In his notes on O’Flaherty’s account, the nineteenth-century historian James Hardiman observed that subsequent embellishments of this tale held that Murchadh had received a certain book (to be identified, of course, with this manuscript) from the inhabitants of O’Brasil, who told him not to open it for seven years. When he finally did so, he found had magically acquired the gift of healing. Hardiman suspected that Murchadh had most likely inherited RIA MS 23 P 10 (ii) from his ancestors, who were hereditary physicians in West Connacht, and that – having had his patrimony confiscated in the seventeenth century and ‘turned quack-doctor to obtain a livelihood’ – he invented the tale of its mysterious island origin in order to attract attention and lend credence to his medical abilities.

Fig. 2: The imaginary Isle of Brasil off the west coast of Ireland, as shown on a map by Abraham Ortelius (1572). Image in the Public Domain.

The contents of RIA MS 23 P 10 (ii) itself are, however, very much in keeping with other learned, academic textbooks compiled by medieval Irish medical scribes. The manuscript contains a beautifully presented pathological treatise arranged in a series of 44 tables, treating exterior and interior diseases of the entire body. The Irish text is a close rendering of the Latin Tacuini aegritudinum, which was completed in Sicily in 1281 and was itself a translation of an Arabic text by the eleventh-century physician Ibn Jazlah of Baghdad. Each page is framed by a preliminary discussion of the diseases arranged in rows across a central table (for observations on the contents of one of these tables, see the July 2024 LEIGHEAS blog here). The boxes at the top of each table provide headings describing the names, complexion, age, season, region, prognosis, cause, symptom, method of evacuation, ‘royal remedy’ and ‘easily found remedy’ associated with each affliction (see, for example, the table in Fig. 1 above, which presents diseases of the female generative organs). To the right of the table on the opposite page is a much longer twelfth entry detailing a universal or general remedy for the disease (see Fig. 3 below). This practical arrangement of information would have been of considerable use for medical scholars and practitioners alike.

Fig. 3: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 10 (ii), p. 85 (15^th century): the universal or general remedy (cura communis .i. leigheas coitcheann) for ailments of the female generative organs outlined on the preceding page (Fig. 1). Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Further Reading:

• Evans, Sophie, ‘The Mythical Island of Hy Brasil and the Book of O’Lees’, Royal Irish Academy Blog Series, 19 September 2019
• Freitag, Barbara, Hy Brasil: The Metamorphosis of an Island. From Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium. (Amsterdam/New York: Brill-Rodopi, 2013)
• Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann (2009), ‘The “Book of the O’Lees” and Other Medical Manuscripts and Astronomical Tracts’, in Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library, ed. by Bernadette Cunningham, Siobhán Fitzpatrick and Petra Schnabel (Dublin: RIA), pp. 81–91
• Ó Con Cheanainn, Tomás, ‘Seanchas ar Mhuintir Laidhe’, Éigse 33 (2002), 179–225
• O’Flaherty, Roderic, A Chorographical Description of West or H-Iar Connaught Written A.D. 1684, ed. by James Hardiman (Dublin, 1846), pp. 68–72

Maynooth University Library MS C8 (3 A 8)

Deborah Hayden

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Maynooth University Library MS C 8 (3 A 8), p. 43: The beginning of an Irish commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen)

This Irish medical codex comprises two parts: one a paper manuscript of 170 pages that has tentatively been dated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on palaeographical grounds, and the other consisting of fragments of two printed books along with a few handwritten pages and fragments of medical material. The first part may have been written by three separate scribes; no certain names, dates or places are mentioned in relation to them, but various notes in the manuscript suggest that the codex subsequently passed through the hands of several individuals. These include ‘John Shiell’ (1650 and 1672), ‘Brian Mac Canna’ (1708) and ‘Semus Dubh Mac Bheathadh’. In the eighteenth century, the manuscript seems to have been in northeast Ulster; a note on p. 152, for example, mentions the parish of Inniskeen in County Monaghan.

The manuscript portion of the codex contains several Aristotelian aphorisms and an Irish translation of a commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, beginning with the famous opening phrase Vita brevis ars vero longa (‘life is short but skill is long [i.e. takes time]’). The manuscript also contains fragmentary Irish translations of the Hippocratic Prognostics and of the Colliget of Averroes, the latter of which was a widely used textbook from the later Middle Ages up to the eighteenth century. In addition, the collection includes Irish renderings of the De medicina by the Roman encyclopaedist Celsus (fl. first century AD) and of the popular text known as De pulsibus, a lengthy poem on Galenic pulsology by the twelfth-century French physician Gilles de Corbeil.

Further reading

• Ó Fiannachta, Pádraig et al., Lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge, Choláiste Phádraig, Má Nuad: clár (Maynooth, 1965-1980)
• Spencer, Walter George (trans.), Aulus Cornelius Celsus. De medicina, 3 vols, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1935-1938)
• Wallis, Faith, ‘Gilles de Corbeil’, in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Thomas F. Glick et al. (New York, 2005), pp. 198-9

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1343 (H. 3. 22)

Siobhán Barrett

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Trinity College Dublin MS 1343 (H. 3. 22), p. 47: The opening page of Tadhg Ó Cuinn’s Irish translation of Circa Instans. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Uilliam Ó Finngaine and Aed Buidhe Ó Leighin are the names of two scribes who worked, along with another unnamed scribe, on this 15^th–century vellum manuscript. The material in this manuscript is mainly pharmaceutical in nature, dealing with simple and compound medicines and their therapeutic uses.

The Materia medica is the longest text in this manuscript. This is an Irish translation by Tadhg Ó Cuinn of Joannes Platearius’ Liber de simplici medicina, usually known from the opening words of the introduction as Circa Instans. There are several copies of this popular text in other Irish medical manuscripts (see Ó Conchubhair 1991 for the complete list). In this manuscript, the scribe, Aed Buidhe Ó Leighin, refers to Ó Cuinn as a ‘Bachelor in Physic’ and states that he completed this work in Montpellier in 1415 (p. 106b). The text consists of a list of 292 simple medicines, i.e. plants, animal products and minerals, ordered alphabetically by their Latin name, which is followed by the Irish name and a description in Irish of their various therapeutic uses.

The Antidotarium Nicolai is a book of about 150 recipes for pharmaceutical compounds, as distinct from the Materia medica, which is a list of simple medicines. The text in this manuscript is Johannes de Sancto Amando’s commentary on the Antidotarium Nicolai. The commentary describes how medicines are made and at what stage of an illness the medicines should be administered. 

Two of the shorter texts in this manuscript have been edited: The virtues of aqua vitae (an alcoholic drink/medicine prepared by distilling wine; see Ó Conchubhair 1989–90); and a text about the medicinal usages of animal excrement (see De Vries 2019).

Further reading

• De Vries, Ranke (2019) ‘A Short Tract on Medicinal Uses for Animal Dung’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies 3.2: 111–36
• Mayes, Brigid (forthcoming 2024), ‘The Materia medica of the Gaelic Physician Tadhg Ó Cuinn (1415): At the Interface of Theory and Practice’, in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World: Vernacular Texts and Traditions, ed. by Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti (Turnhout: Brepols)
• Ó Concheanainn, Tomás (1976), ‘The Scribe of the Irish Astronomical Tract in RIA B II 1’, Celtica 11: 158–67
• Ó Conchubhair, Mícheál, ed. and trans. (1991), Tadhg Ó Cuinn, An Irish Materia Medica
• Ó Conchubhair, Mícheál, ed. (1989–90), ‘Uisce beatha’, Studia Hibernica 25: 49–75

Dublin, King’s Inns Library MS 17

Deborah Hayden

Dublin, King’s Inns MS 17 (15^th century), fol. 1r: Beginning of a tract on purging by means of laxatives, vomiting, vein-letting and cupping. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

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This vellum manuscript dates to the fifteenth century and consists of three separate fragments of medical material. The first contains a tract on purging by means of laxatives, vomiting, vein-letting and cupping, citing authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, Rhazes and Avicenna. Another incomplete copy of this tract is found in the fifteenth-century Dublin, TCD MS H. 2. 15a, which may have used this manuscript as an exemplar. The second fragment deals with eye ailments and their cures, while the third section contains an incomplete Irish version of a tract on diseases. This last part of the manuscript appears to draw principally on the Viaticum of Constantinus Africanus, the prolific translator who rendered many Arabic medical texts into Latin in the latter half of the eleventh century. The Viaticum was an adaptation of the popular medical handbook of Ibn al-Jazzar (d. 979), Kitab Zād al-musāfir wa-qūt al-ḥaḍir (‘Provisions for the Traveller and Nourishment of the Settled’) and was intended to serve as a convenient handbook for medical practice, presenting illnesses and remedies in head-to-toe order. The last two pages of King’s Inns MS 17 contain a text on wounds and brief notes on the medicinal properties of various ingredients. In addition to the illuminated first page (above) and several elaborate initials, the manuscript contains a number of marginal drawings, such as the figures shown below from the bottom of folio 5v, who appear to be engaged in ploughing, digging and threshing.

Dublin, King’s Inns Library MS 17, fol. 5v: marginal drawings of figures ploughing, digging and threshing. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Further reading:

The Constantinus Africanus blog: https://constantinusafricanus.com/

De Brún, Pádraig, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in King’s Inns Library Dublin (Dublin, 1972), pp. 45–9

Wack, Mary, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990)

Wulff, Winifred (ed.), A Mediaeval Handbook of Gynaecology and Midwifery preceded by a Section on the Grades and on the Treatment of Wounds and some Good Counsel to the Physician Himself finishing with a Discussion on the Treatment of Scabies, in Irish Texts Fasciculus V, ed. by J. Fraser, P. Grosjean & J. G. O’Keefe (London, 1934)

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 129

Siobhán Barrett

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 129, fol. 11v: Volvelle illustrating the signs of the zodiac (reproduced with permission of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

This month’s manuscript is Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 129, which contains medical, astronomical and veterinary material. While most of the material is written in Irish, the manuscript also includes some Latin texts. It is the work of one scribe, An Gilla Glas Ó Caiside, who has written his name in several places throughout the manuscript. Ó Caiside is the family name of the physicians associated with the Maguires of County Fermanagh. An Gilla Glas includes many interesting snippets of information; for example, he names four locations of writing: Carraig O Chuanig can be identified as Carrigoguonagh in County Limerick; Cillin na nEala is now known as Killeenagallive, the site of a Franciscan Abbey near Emly, Co Tipperary;  Cill tSibneáin (also Cill Teimhneáin) is now called Kiltinan, Co Tipperary;  and Mainisdir na nAcaidech in Caisel na Righ is Hackett’s Abbey, the Franciscan Friary in Cashel, Co Tipperary (Ó Cuív 2001, 283). The scribe acknowledges that he is copying the work of other scholars, including Diarmaid O Siriden, Seaan mac Math(g)amna mic Diarmada Duibh, Semuis mic Davidh mic Muiris and Cormac Mac Duinnshléibhe. He also includes dates of writing between 1515 and 1527. He even comments on the state of his examplar:

Mese In Gilla Glas o Kcd do scribh so as an encairt as mesa do chonacc riam a Carraig O Chuanaig anno domini .m^o. 5^o. 18. (fol. 41r31)

(I am In Gilla Glas Ó Caiside who wrote this from the worst manuscript I ever saw in Carrigoguonagh in the year of our Lord 1518).

The greater part of this manuscript is made up of medical material but there are several astronomical texts too. The most visually striking pages are two beautifully illustrated volvelles or wheel-charts that contain rotating vellum discs, one of which calculates in which sign of the zodiac the sun and moon are on any given day (see above).

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 129, fol. 11r: Volvelle used to calculate moveable feast days (reproduced with permission of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

The second illustration calculates moveable feast days. I suspect that the robed figure in the centre of the rotating disc is a depiction of an astronomer with four stars in the background representing the heavens or the four cardinal points; north, south, east, and west. He is holding an instrument, a ‘tool of his trade’ in his left hand, perhaps an astrolab. A banner crossing his body contains the words: Digitus ostendit tempus precens pes uero preteritum et apsens [sic] (The finger points to the present time, the foot, however, to the past and the future).

The medical texts in this manuscript include: Isaac Judaes, Diete Particulares; John of Parma, Practica; a Quid pro quo; and two texts of Bernard of Gordon, De decem ingeniis curandorum morborum and definitions from the Lilium Medicinae (on which see further here). The longest text in this manuscript is what Ó Cuív (2001, 291) describes as a ‘medico-botanical glossary alphabetically arranged’. This is an Irish translation of a selection of entries from Simon of Genoa’s Clavis sanationis. It contains around 680 medical ingredients, ordered alphabetically by the Latin name with very many English and Anglo-Norman names but with very few Irish names; however, descriptions of the materials are in Irish.

Further reading:

• Barrett, Siobhán (forthcoming), ‘An Gilla Glas Ó Caiside and an Irish version of Symoin Ianuensis’ Clavis Sanationis’, in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World. Vernacular Texts and Traditions, ed. by Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti (Turnhout: Brepols)
• Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibhinn (2019), ‘Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts in Gilbert MS 147’, Éigse 40: 43–114
• Ó Cuív, Brian (1985), ‘Fragments of Irish Medieval Treatises on Horses’, Celtica 17: 113–22
• Ó Cuív, Brian (2001), Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and Oxford College Libraries, 2 vols (Dublin: DIAS)
• Ó Muraile, Nollaig (2016), ‘The Hereditary Medical Families of Gaelic Ireland’, in Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, ed. by Liam P. Ó Murchú, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 28 (London: Irish Texts Society), pp. 85–113

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 2076

Siobhán Barrett

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 2076, fol. 1v: The beginning of the first particle of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae, on the subject of fever. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

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This manuscript of 714 pages is the longest Gaelic-language manuscript in the National Library of Scotland. It was probably written in Ireland ca 1600 by an anonymous scribe with the assistance of two other scribes. One of these has been identified as Neil Beaton, a member of the famous Scottish medical family, the Beatons. There were two divisions of the Beaton family and this manuscript is associated with the Beatons from Husabost in Skye.

There are three texts in this manuscript: an Irish copy of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae, followed by two short texts, one a pharmaceutical text by Rémacle Fuchs consisting of ten tables of common prescriptions, and the other an incomplete copy of Bernard of Gordon’s Decem Ingenia, which describes ten methods of curing disease.

One of the interesting aspects of this manuscript is a note, written by Rev. Donald MacQueen on his presentation of the manuscript to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries in 1784. In this note, he describes the economic value of the manuscript and also the lengths to which its owner, Farchar Beaton of Husibost, went to protect it:

The Lilium Medicinae of Bernardus Gordonius … was early translated into Gaelic, and became the physical pandects of the Beatons, the hereditary physicians of the Lords of the Isles … The price of transcribing a copy was sixty milk cows. The copy possessed by Farchar Beaton of Husibost … was of such value in his estimation that when he trusted himself to a boat, in passing an arm of the sea, to attend any patient at Dunvegan, the seat of Macleod, he sent his servant by land, for the greater security, with the Lilium Medicinae.

Further reading:

Bannerman, John (2015), The Beatons: A Medical Kindred in the Classical Gaelic Tradition, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: J. Donald)

Demaitre, Luke (1980), Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and Practitioner (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies)

MacKechnie, J. (1973), Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in Selected Libraries in Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols (Boston: G.K. Hall)

MacKinnon, Donald (1912), A Descriptive Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and Elsewhere in Scotland. (Edinburgh: W. Brown)

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 445 (24 B 3)

Siobhán Barrett

Royal Irish Academy 445 (24 B 3) (15th/16th century), p. 46: The beginning of a chapter of remedies for ear ailments. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

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Conla Mac an Leagha was the main scribe of this 128-page vellum manuscript. He was a member of the Mac an Leagha medical family and appears to have worked under the patronage of the Mac Diarmada lords from the medieval kingship of Magh Luirg, in the border area of counties Roscommon and Sligo. The date of June 1496 is recorded in a colophon to Conla’s copy of a lapidary (or treatise on the medicinal properties of stones and minerals). The scribe mentions five different places of writing altogether, including his own house, which may have been located at Gréach na gCaorach (Greaghnageeragh) in the barony of Boyle, Co. Roscommon.

The manuscript contains some 15 different medical and philosophical texts in Irish, including a fragment of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae; a fragment of Walter of Agilon’s De Dosibus; a short text called a Cidh pro Quo (‘Quid pro quo’) that lists possible substitutes for ingredients which may be unavailable; and a short treatise on the contents of urine containing some words in ogham script (on which, see further here and here).

By far the longest text in the manuscript, however, is the greater part of a remedy collection, 9 paper leaves of which are now preserved in a separate manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy (23 N 29). This substantial remedy collection contains around 920 cures grouped by body part and ordered a capite ad calcem, ‘from head to heel’. The ingredients are mostly herbal but minerals and animal products are also recommended. While most of the remedies are in prose format, there are also many in verse, along with several charms and prayers. Although Conla Mac an Leagha refers frequently to the usual medical authorities, such as Galen, Dioscorides and Constantine the African, evidence of adaptation to suit an Irish audience is seen in the occasional substitution of these names for those of Irish mythological and historical figures.

Further reading:

Barrett, Siobhán, ‘Because they were worth it: 5 medieval hair treatments and trends’, RTÉ Brainstorm, 12 July 2023  

Barrett, Siobhán, ‘The king of Dál nAraidi’s salve’, Ériu 69 (2019), 171–8

Hayden, Deborah, ‘Attribution and authority in a medieval Irish medical compendium’, Studia Hibernica 45 (2019), 19–51

Hayden, Deborah, ‘The lexicon of pulmonary ailment in some medieval Irish medical texts’, Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie 66 (2019), 105–29

Hayden, Deborah ‘Old English in the Irish Charms’, Speculum 97(2) (2022), 349–76

Hayden, Deborah, ‘A sixteenth-century Irish collection of remedies for ailments of the male reproductive organs’, Celtica 33 (2021), 248–76

Hayden, Deborah, ‘Three versified medical recipes invoking Dían Cécht’, in Fír Fesso: A Festschrift for Neil McLeod, ed. by Anders Ahlqvist and Pamela O’Neill, Sydney Series in Celtic Studies 17 (Sydney: University of Sydney), pp. 107–23

Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, ‘An Irish medical treatise on vellum and paper from the 16th century’, in Paper and the Paper Manuscript: A Context for the Transmission of Gaelic Literature, ed. by Pádraig Ó Macháin (Cork: Cló Torna), pp. 111–25

Walsh, Paul (1947) ‘An Irish medical family ‒ Mac an Leagha’, in Irish Men of Learning. Studies by Paul Walsh, ed. by Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin: Three Candles), pp. 206–18

Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G11

Deborah Hayden

National Library of Ireland MS G11 (15^th century), p. 451: The beginning of the Old Irish medico-legal tract Bretha Déin Chécht. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

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This fifteenth-century codex is one of the largest surviving Irish-language medical manuscripts. Its main scribe was Donnchadh Ó Bolgaidhe, evidently a member of the prominent Leinster-based medical kindred of that name. Donnchadh was active as a scribe between 1466 (the earliest date mentioned in this manuscript) and 1475, and seems to have been working at his home, which may have been located near Athy, Co. Kildare. The manuscript has been described as ‘a representative medical library’ containing texts dealing with most of the known branches of medicine, as well as materia medica, medical glossaries and medico-philosophical tracts. It includes several substantial texts, such as a copy of a Latin herbal translated into Irish by the ‘bachelor of medicine’ Tadhg Ó Cuinn in 1415 that details the curative properties and medical application of many plants. There are also many shorter texts of a practical nature, such as cures for sea-sickness; instructions for how to draw weapons from the body or heal wounds to the head; and charms for staunching blood or for treating gynaecological and obstetrical issues. Of particular note, however, is the inclusion of the sole surviving complete copies of two Old Irish medico-legal tracts that have been dated on linguistic and contextual grounds to the seventh century: namely, a tract on the fees due to a physician for healing various types of injury entitled Bretha Déin Chécht (‘Judgements of [the mythical healer-figure] Dían Cécht’), and a tract on sick-maintenance known as Bretha Crólige (‘Judgements of Blood-Lying’).

The entire manuscript has been digitised by the Irish Script on Screen project and can be viewed here.

Further reading:

Binchy, D. A. (ed. and trans.), ‘Bretha crólige’, Ériu, 12 (1938), 1–77

Binchy, D. A. (ed. and trans.), ‘Bretha Déin Chécht’, Ériu, 20 (1966), 1–66

Ó Cuinn, Tadhg, An Irish Materia Medica (interim version, 1991), ed. and trans. by Mícheál Ó Conchubhair (alias Michael O’Connor).

Ní Shéaghdha, Nessa, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, Fasciculus I. MSS G1–G14 (Dublin: DIAS, 1967)