Medieval Manuscript Medicine

How did early medieval people treat illnesses and injuries?  Most remedies for curing ailments were probably not written down, but rather passed down orally from person to person and from family to family.  Many people in this time were illiterate, so even the oldest texts included many illustrations and drawings.

Scholars believe that around 1256 AD, a French countess commissioned the creation of a health manual to share with her four daughters.  It is known as the "Regime du Corps," translated to "Regimen of the Body."  This book was widely copied and became extremely popular across Europe, especially during the 14th and 15th Centuries.  Over 70 unique manuscripts remain today!  

These manuscripts offer a window into many different aspects of daily medieval life - from sleeping, bathing, and preparing food to bloodletting and leeching.  Jennifer Borland, professor of art history at Oklahoma State University, recently published a book about this manuscript in which she discusses how it depicts the role and responsibilities of women in wealthy medieval households.  The images in the original manuscripts show women caring for their families, providing light medical treatment, and coordinating a well-run household.  This domestic management advice was passed down from generation to generation through this book.   

Are there any lessons that we can learn today from medieval texts?  For a long time, the medieval era has been dismissed as largely irrelevant.  This time period is popularly referred to as the "Dark Ages," which erroneously suggests that it was an unenlightened time.  However, some medievalists and scientists are now looking back to history for clues to inform the search for new medical treatments.

Erin Connelly, CLIR Mellon Fellow for Data Curation in Medieval Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is part of the Ancientbiotics Team, a group of medievalists, microbiologists, medicinal chemists, parasitologists, pharmacists, and data scientists from multiple universities and countries.  This team believes that answers to the modern antibiotic crisis could be found in medical history.  With the aid of modern technologies, they are compiling a database of medieval medical recipes.  By revealing patterns in medieval medical practice, this database could inform future laboratory research into the materials used to treat infection in the past. 

In 2015, the Ancientbiotics Team published a pilot study on a 1000-year-old recipe called Bald's Eyesalve from "Bald's Leechbook," an Old English medical text.  Bald's Eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion), and ox gall.  Once these ingredients have been mixed together, they must sit in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.   This eyesalve was to be used for treating a stye, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.  A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus.  Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (commonly known as MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics.  These Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, pneumonia, and sepsis.  In this study, Bald's Eyesalve turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed Staphylococcus aureus biofilms in an in vitro infection model.  It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models!

Tu Youyou, a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for her discovery of a new therapy for malaria.  In the late 1960's, the single-celled parasite that caused malaria had become resistant to chloroquine, which was the standard malaria treatment at the time.  Tu Youyou searched over 2,000 texts from the Zhou, Qing, and Han Dynasties.  After she isolated the ingredient she believed would work (one active compound in wormwood, called artemisinin) and tested it on monkeys and mice with 100% cure rate, she volunteered to be the first human test subject.  Her discovery has saved millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.  The World Health Organization (WHO) now recommends artemisinin combination therapy as the first line of defense against malaria.  The Lasker Foundation called her discovery "arguably the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half-century."

The integration of medieval manuscripts into contemporary medical research signifies their enduring relevance and valuable contributions to the field.  These manuscripts stand as a testament to the lasting impact of human curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge across the ages.