Brain and mind in Anglo-Saxon medicine

Viator - Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Volumn 37, Issue , 2006, Pages

  McIlwain, James T ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149480740     PISSN: 00835897     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.3017480     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. E. Anderson, Folk Taxonomies in Early English (Madison 2003) 330
2. For a concise summary of this debate see J. Rocca, Galen on the Brain (Leiden 2003) 17-47
3. An extensive treatment is found in R. B. Onions, The Origins of European Thought, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 1954)
4. A. Harbus, The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry (Amsterdam 2002) 23-59
5. E. Jager, "Speech and the chest in Old English poetry: orality or pectorality," Speculum 65 (1990) 845-859
6. M. J. Phillips, "Heart, mind and soul in Old English: a semantic study" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1985)
7. BT, s.v. mod. M. Godden, "Anglo-Saxons on the mind," Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge 1985) 271-298, esp. 287-290
8. see, for example, A. Wierzbicka, Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-specific Configurations (New York 1992) 40-47
9. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The First Series, ed. P. Clemoes (London 1997) 527: "On halgum gewrite bid gelomliee heafod geset for pæs mannes mode."
10. Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Slarcraft of Early England, 3 vols., ed. and trans. T. O. Cockayne (London 1864-1866; repr. 1961)
11. B. M. Olds, "The Anglo-Saxon Leechbook III: A critical edition and translation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver 1984)
12. M. Löweneck, Peri Didaxeon, Eine Sammlung von Rezepten in Englischer Sprache aus dem 11./12. Jahrhundert (Erlangen 1896); see vi-vii for a discussion of the sources
13. M. L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Cambridge 1993) 64, argues that Peri Didaxeon, a partial translation of the Practica Petrocelli (n. 19 below), is of too late a date to stand as an Anglo-Saxon treatise. The Medicina de Quadripedibus includes eight recipes that incorporate the brains of animals but makes no other reference to the brain. Animal brains do not appear in recipes of the leechbooks, Lacnunga or the Herbarium. All of these texts were also printed and translated by Cockayne in his collection
14. C. H. Talbot, "Some notes on Anglo-Saxon Medicine," Medical History 9 (1965) 156-169
15. M. L. Cameron, "The sources of medical knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England," Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983) 135-155
16. "Bald's Leechbook: it's sources and their use in its compilation," Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983) 153-182
17. M. Deegan (n. 10 above) identifies probable and possible sources in parallel with her printed text. Pettit (n. 11 above) 2: passim, records numerous sources and analogues of material in Lacnunga and Cockayne (n. 9 above) occasionally identifies a passage in the leechbooks as derived ultimately from a Greek or Latin writer. Certain sources, such as the Physica Plinii, that provided much material for the recipes in the Anglo-Saxon texts contain little by way of anatomical or physiological commentary of relevance to the present study; see J.N. Adams and M. Deegan, "Bald's Leechbook and the Physica Plinii," Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992) 87-114
18. J. Riddle, "Theory and practice in medieval medicine," Viator 5 (1974) 157-184
19. L. Voigts, "Anglo-Saxon plant remedies and the Anglo-Saxons," ISIS 70 (1979) 250-268, at 254
20. P. Thompson, "The disease that we call cancer," Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. S. Campbell, C. B. Hall and D. Klausner (New York 1992) 1-11, at 4. To this one may add that the Latin sources themselves are often extracts or compilations from earlier works and it is difficult to know with certainty whether a compilation or one of its sources was used in creating the Old English medical texts
21. Practica Alexandri yatros greci cum expositione glose interiinearis Jacobi de partibus et Januensis in margine posite (Lyon 1504) fol. 10b
22. H. Gneuss, "A preliminary list of manuscripts written or owned in England up to 1100," Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981) 1-60, at 13 (no. 145)
23. Works of Isidore, including the Etymologies, were known in Anglo-Saxon England; see, for example, M. Lapidge, "Surviving booklists from Anglo-Saxon England," Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (n. 3 above) 33-89, at 86
24. Vindicianus, Epitome Altera, in Theodori Prisciani Euporislon Libri III Cum Physicorum Fragmento et Additamentis Pseudo-Theodoreis, ed. V.Rose (Leipzig 1894) 467-468: "Cerebrum est medulla capitis copiosis teneribus tenuisque inplicitum venolis. Quod multum copiosius habemus quam reliqua animalia, ideoque omnibus illis sapientiores sumus, fistulas plus habendo unde intellectus nobis advenit, visus auditus odoratus et gustus."
25. On the history of this idea, which can be traced to the De Natura Hominis of Nemesius of Emese, see C. D. Green, "Where did the ventricular localization of mental faculties come from?" Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 39 (2003) 131-142
26. S. Finger, Origins of Neuroscience (New York 1994) 18-19
27. and some are discussed in W. Bonser, The Medical Background of Anglo-Saxon England (London 1963) 258-263. This rich vocabulary deserves detailed study
28. On OE wœta for Latin humor, see L. Ayoub, "Old English wœta and the medical theory of the humours," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94 (1995) 332-346
29. On Anglo-Saxon notions of disease causation, see A. Meaney, "The Anglo-Saxon view of the causes of disease," Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture (n. 14 above) 12-33
30. A. Meaney, "The practice of medicine in England about the year 1000," Social History of Medicine 13 (2000) 221-237
31. M. L. Cameron, "Anglo-Saxon medicine and magic," Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988) 191-215
32. a view shared by J. H. G. Grattan and C. Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine (London 1952) esp. 31-71
33. Latin Alexander (n. 15 above) fol. 8a: "Fit ergo verus freneticus ex coleribus rubeis cum ad cerebrum pervenerint incensa febre"
34. A. Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 AD. (Oxford 1949) 358, gives yellowish-green as the meaning of rubeus, citing Oribasius
35. Theodorus Priscianus, Euporiston (n. 18 above) 113: "frenitici plus gravati lethargicos faciunt, lethargici vero relevati in frenitieos revocantur"
36. Cameron, "Bald's Leechbook" (n. 12 above) 166, cautions that "although it is clear that the works of Vindicianus and Theodorus Priscianus have served as sources for material in the Leechbook, it is not clear that these works were known at first hand to its compiler."
37. O. Temkin, The Falling Sickness 2nd. ed. (Baltimore 1971) 86-96
38. The Medical Works of Hippocrates, ed. J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann (Oxford 1950) 190-193
39. Petrocellus (n. 19 above) fol. 79b: "tenebratio in cerebro et omnis neruositas a cerebro descendens, sub melancholico humore et frigida flegmata (sic) in stomacho hac passione grauatur."
40. Cassius Felix, De la Médecine, ed. and trans. A. Fraisse (Paris 2002) 188
41. The debate surrounding cardiocentric and eneephaloeentric theories would in fact continue for several centuries; N. G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils (Princeton 1981) 175-176, 192-195
42. E. Clarke and C. D. O'Malley, The Human Brain and Spinal Cord, 2nd ed. (San Francisco 1996) 25-26
43. A. Korenberg and I. Hort, "Medieval descriptions and doctrines of stroke: preliminary analysis of selected sources. Part III: Multiplying speculations-The high and late Middle Ages (1000-1450)," Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 7 (1998) 186-200, esp. 193-195
44. For examples of medical texts in ecclesiastical collections, see M. Lapidge, "Surviving booklists" (n. 17 above) 53, 60, 75. Meaney, "The practice of medicine" (n. 34 above) 224, discusses evidence of the monastic associations of Anglo-Saxon physicians
45. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (n. 11 above) 25-29
46. For the influence of religious writings on the semantics of "heart" and "breast," see X. von Ertzdorff, "Das 'Hertz' in der Lateinisch-theologischen und frühen volkssprachigen regligiösen Literatur," Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache 84 (1962)249-301