HERB - Re: Culpepper and beginning period books

[Gaylin Walli]

Jadwiga and Agnes wrote:
> >    I would therefore recommend DP O'Hanlon's translation of 
>"Macer's Virtues of
> > Herbs". Macer wrote in rhymed Latin about 1200, it is pretty straight from
> > Dioscorides.
>
>I checked for this one; the only copy I could find in libraries is in the
>New York Botanical Garden....

Once again my library is at home. I think there is another translation
as well. Not published recently, mind you, but in the US (Cambridge, Mass.)
by Harvard University Press roughly 1950 is memory serves. It was
really published in  by Upsala by the same people who published the
Agnus Castus by Gosta Brodin. Gah...my memory is going and it's not
coming up in the LOC website. It's on the back of my book at home for
crying out loud! Fooey. I'll look it up tonight.

>Then there are things like Hildegarde of Bingen's writings, which we can't
>be sure who used.

Just to ask briefly, opinions on the recent proliferation of these copies
of her medical writings? Good editions? Bad editions? Ones you wouldn't
be without? I passed one by at War in order to buy a copy of Pleyn Delight
for a budding cook and I'm wondering if I need to put Bingen's work on my
things-to-buy list.

>Or the Nine Herbs charm of the Anglo-Saxons?

? This is something I'm unfamiliar with. I did recently come across a
copy of Tony Hunt's _Anglo-Norman Medicine. Vol. 1. Roger Frugard's
Chirurgia. The Practica Brevis of Platearius_ and was seriously
considering a trip to the library to request it. Same thing or not?

>Well, I can't make any comparative statements about this, since my edition
>hasn't got the recipes and I've finally broken down and just ordered a
>copy that does.

I don't think you'll regret it. I actually have three copies of Culpepper,
one facsimile edition included. And I do use all of them. The recipes are
interesting and useful in terms of research because I think they give you
a bridge to preparations that might exist in, say, Grieve's herbal which
is closer to our lifetimes.

>I'm very fond of Markham's _English Housewife_, myself, and I seem to
>think I have a few other sources kicking around that I would use.

I think I would pick Markham's work as a good all-around book to have.
It gives you a flavor of the time and lets you jump into so many other
topics. For a beginner with no idea where to go, this might be a good
place to look into the mindset of what Markham thought was stuff the
housewife should not bother a physician with and fix or work on herself.

Jasmine
Iasmin de Cordoba

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