Dublin, Trinity College MS 1435 (E.3.30)
Siobhán Barrett
Figure 1: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1435 (E.3.30), p. 260: an illustration of the seven tunics of the eye (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen)
This paper and vellum manuscript of 273 pages has been dated to the 17th century, although there are no scribal dates or signatures. Eight separate but unnamed hands have been identified by the authors of the Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin. According to an earlier catalogue that was compiled in 1743 by John Lyon, the manuscript was written ‘by Pearce Nicholas and others’, but any evidence to support this no longer exists (Abbott and Gwynn 1921: 309). There is a cryptic note at the end of p. 273 of the manuscript, which is possibly the signature of one of the scribes.
Among the texts included are Petrus de Argellata’s De Chirurgia, the longest one in the manuscript; an excerpt from John of Gaddesden’s Rosa Anglica, beginning with a description of three forms of arthritis, sciatica, podagra (gout) and chiragra (a type of gout affecting the hands); a section from Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae; and part of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates.
Diagrams and drawings are rare in Irish medical manuscripts, making the few found in this source worthy of mention. On p. 260 there is an illustration of the seven tunics of the eye that accompanies a description of the anatomy of the eye from the Lilium Medicinae. Included in Petrus de Argellata’s De Chirurgia on p. 112 is a drawing of a nasal speculum. This text is preserved in at least five other Irish-language medical manuscripts and all of them, except for one, include a similar drawing of a nasal speculum. The exception is Edinburgh, NLS MS 73.1.22, fol. 326r, where only part of the handles of the instrument are now visible due to the fact that the margin of the page has been torn away. In the bottom margin of p. 212 of TCD MS 1435 there is a useful table of the symbols used for medicinal measures.
Figure 2: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1435 (E.3.30), p. 112: a drawing of a nasal speculum (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen)
Further reading:
- Abbott, Thomas Kingsmill and Edward John Gwynn (1921), Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co), pp. 309–11
- Demaitre, Luke E. (1980), Doctor Bernard de Gordon, Professor and Practitioner (Toronto : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies)
- Geoghegan, Patrick M. (2009), ‘Lyon, John’, in Eoin Kinsella et al. (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy)
- Ó Murchú, Liam P., ed. (2016), Rosa Anglica: Reassessments. Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 28 (Dublin: Irish Texts Society)
- Wulff, Winifred, ed. (1923), Rosa Anglica Sev Rosa Medicinæ Johannis Anglici: An Early Modern Irish Translation of a Section of the Mediaeval Medical Text-Book of John of Gaddesden, Irish Texts Society 25 (London: Irish Texts Society)