Nutton, V

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Medical Historyhttp://journals.cambridge.org/MDHAdditional services for Medical History:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereMinta Collins, Medieval herbals: the illustrativetraditions, The British Library Studies in MedievalCulture, London, British Library and University ofToronto Press, 2000, pp. 334, illus., £45.00 (hardback0-71234638-4), £19.95 (paperback 0-7123-46414).Vivian NuttonMedical History / Volume 45 / Issue 04 / October 2001, pp 541 - 542DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300068460, Published online: 16 November 2012Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0025727300068460How to cite this article:Vivian Nutton (2001). Medical History, 45, pp 541-542 doi:10.1017/S0025727300068460Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/MDH, IP address: 144.82.107.68 on 12 Nov 2013Book Reviewsit is surprising that Hobby talks in slightlyanachronistic terms of the "gender politicsof midwifery manuals". This is however aminor criticism of the erudite andinformative introduction to the text.Hobby's carefully annotated edition hassurely succeeded in making Jane Sharp'sfunny, original and intelligent text availableto a wider, modem audience.Cathy McClive,Warwick UniversityMinta Collins, Medieval herbals: theillustrative traditions, The British LibraryStudies in Medieval Culture, London,British Library and University of TorontoPress, 2000, pp. 334, illus., £45.00 (hardback0-71234638-4), £19.95 (paperback 0-7123-46414).This nicely produced volume offers bothmore and less than its title promises. Begunas a dissertation on a group of latemedieval herbals in Latin and French,including Wellcome 626, it studies theiconography of plants in a wide variety ofmanuscripts, from the Johnson papyrus,Wellcome 5753, written in Greek aroundAD400, via Arabic manuscripts to Latinmanuscripts of the fifteenth century such asBL Sloane 2020, the Carrara Herbal. Thisallows the author to trace links acrosscultures, and to compare plant drawings forthe same text produced in northern Iraq,Constantinople, or Burgundy. Her majoraim is to track the possible survival of aclassical tradition of botanical illustration,insisted upon by Charles Singer, over thecenturies from Crateuas, fl. 90BC, andDioscorides, fl. AD 60, to medieval Franceand Italy. This she does extremely well,showing how artists modified earlierdrawings or inserted figures, and warnsagainst any easy schematism or romanticidealization of the Greeks. She demonstratesthe complexity of the herbal tradition, bothin its text and illustrations, and futureeditors of Dioscorides or the Apuleiusherbal, or indeed classical philologistsinterested in transmission, will neglect herfindings at their peril.They are backed up by precise personalobservation of most of the manuscripts hererecorded, often challenging accepted views.Her inspection of Bodley 130 leads her toconclude that many of its most lifelikedepictions were made at a date much laterthan the original illustrations. But she doesnot commit herself to a date, and thefamous blackberry (fig. 51), one of thosesuspected of being retouched, does not seemto show the same signs of later reworkingas does the spurge (pl. xviii). But so wellbased appear most of Dr Collins'observations that only further autopsy isgoing to disprove others that might seemmore controversial.But those who are looking for a historyof herbals and herbal texts will bedisappointed by the intensity of the focuson plant illustrations. Non-illustrated textsare deliberately excluded unless they showaffinities with others that are or were. Onemight regret, too, a failure to compare thetradition ofzoological or of anatomicalillustration, e.g. in the Niketas codex and itsoffspring, which can also contribute to thediscussion about the development of realismand drawing from life that underlies muchof Dr Collins' argument. She raisesquestions about patronage and theindividual abilities of artists, but herconclusion is too brief to do them fulljustice.The great merit of this book is itswillingness to go outside the traditionallinguistic categories of editors to look atvisual representations of the same plants inculturally linked, and then divided, areas.Dr Collins encourages her readers to thinkbig, even if at times her eye and her notesare fixed firmly on minutiae. I have learneda great deal from her, and I shall constantlyreturn to the beautiful illustrations and to541Book Reviewsher trenchant comments to check my ownspeculations.Since Dr Collins' methodologyencourages precision and an exchange ofinformation, I append a few corrections andsuggestions. In general, her Latin is weak,and her quotations and, since heracquaintance with medieval Latinabbreviations appears limited, hertranscriptions need checking. Often theplant name as given in the caption does notcorrespond to that on the plate. The authorof the first major study of the JulianaAnicia codex in Vienna was not, as theunwise might suppose from hermisunderstanding of the Latin, aFrenchman called De Premerstein, but aGermanic Anton Von Premerstein. A SAtiya also becomes Aiya. I missed adiscussion of another papyrus herbal,already noticed by Johnson in 1913, thatseems to predate by a generation Wellcome5753. Details of this herbal, from Tebtunis,are most accessible in M H Marganne,Inventaire analytique des papyrus grecs,1981, nos 176, 178-81. The Kansas CityMuseum also had on display in the early1980s a few leaves from an illustratedArabic herbal of Dioscorides (if my memoryis right), from a private collection. The oddshaped palliasses in Laurenziana 73, 41(fig. 44) have parallels in the BolognaApollonius, and also in religious paintingsof the death of the Virgin. Finally, a set ofphotographs of the Herten MS of Apuleius,destroyed in the last war, p. 191, still existsin the Welch Library at Johns HopkinsUniversity, Baltimore.Vivian Nutton,The Wellcome Trust Centre for the Historyof Medicine at UCLBartholomaeus Eustachius, A little treatiseon the teeth. Thefirst authoritative book ondentistry (1563), edited and introduced byDavid A Chernin and Gerald Shklar andpublished in facsimile with a translationfrom the Latin by Joan H Thomas, Canton,Science History Publications/USA forDental Classics in Perspective, 1999, pp. x,180, $59.95 (hardback 0-88135-259-4).Bartholomaeus Eustachius is best knownfor his eponymous discovery of the tubeconnecting the ear and the throat. Aprofessor at the Collegio della Sapienza inRome, he made a number of closeobservations of human anatomy, especiallyof the throat and head, resulting in aseries of drawings executed in 1552 thatclearly established him as one of theforemost investigators of his day.Unfortunately for his posthumousreputation, however, his drawings wereheld in the Papal Library until 1714,when they were published together withnotes by Clement XI's physician, GiovanniMaria Lancisi. The only contemporarypublication by this superb anatomist washis little treatise on the teeth, De dentibus,printed in Venice in 1563. A moderntranslation is therefore to be welcomed.The resulting English is readable andconveys the main points clearly, althoughit is not aimed at a rendition that fullyconveys the nuances of Eustachius' views.Eustachius himself presents his findingsforthrightly, and according to anarrangement in which he can discussprevious views about the teeth. He beginswith arguments about the nature of teeth,and goes on to give a general descriptionof their appearance, before turning to(among other topics) their size andnumber, location, articulation andarrangement, their roots, their materialcauses, their generation, the nature of theinner concavities of the teeth, theirsensation, utility, unnatural formations,and decay. His knowledge is based onobservations of the skeletons of "apes"(including at least one true ape), workwith dogs, sheep and goats, and humandissection. His human dissections includedones on aborted and stillborn foetuses542

Minta Collins, Medieval herbals: the illustrative traditions, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, London, British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2000, pp. 334, illus., £45.00 (hardback 0-71234638-4), £19.95 (paperback 0-7123-46414)

Minta Collins, Medieval herbals: the illustrative traditions, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, London, British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2000, pp. 334, illus., £45.00 (hardback 0-71234638-4), £19.95 (paperback 0-7123-46414)

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