Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as ‘manuscript waste.’ To us, several hundred years later, it seems a horrible thing. However, it was common practice for early bookbinders to cut up and use pages from unwanted manuscripts as binding material. These pages were sturdy and were used for paste-downs, wrappers (covers), spine-linings, or gathering reinforcements. Not only did the practice essentially recycle texts that were outdated, damaged, or for some other reason, no longer used, it also gives us an opportunity to get a glimpse into the history of a specific text’s use. If we think about it, it’s not too much different than how we treat old newspapers today: as decoupage, potty-training mats for puppies, packing material, etc., etc., etc.
Author: Staff
There’s beauty in limp vellum covers*
Meet 10a 215 (Composite medical miscellany), my personal favorite.
Full diet or half diet?
– by Robert Hicks, Director of the Mütter Museum & the Historical Medical Library
William Maul Measey Chair for the History of Medicine
Special collections libraries occasionally spawn serendipitous discoveries while performing the most tedious tasks. Reference Librarian Caitlin Angelone was performing another bout of purging decades’ old pamphlet boxes of unneeded offprints of medical journal papers when she discovered a yellowed, folded wall poster. Carefully opening it, she discovered a ten-day diet schedule for posting in Union army hospital kitchens during the Civil War. In fact, the fine print at the bottom of the schedule commanded medical officers to conduct an “experimental trial” of the diet plan and report results to Surgeon General William A. Hammond, and scrupulously account for and report related expenses under the hospital fund, dated October 28, 1862.
“Can you give this a look-over?”
Just like modern-day scholars have trouble reading some texts in medieval manuscripts because the handwriting is poor or sloppy; water-damaged, flaking, or torn; in a difficult dialect; or highly abbreviated, so too did medieval scribes. Texts were copied from an exemplar, and it was not uncommon for slight changes to exist among copies from the same manuscript. This could be due to line-skipping, the inability to read a word, or numerous other reasons.
Not an inch of wasted space
Take a close look at line 20. Anything look off to you? While reading semi-gothic cursive script (and in Latin, at that) is not always easy, the last half of line 20 is seemingly completely illegible. That’s because it’s not words at all – the pen-work here is simply to fill in the rest of the line for aesthetic reasons. You’ll also see this kind of pen-work when the scribe tested the flow of ink from the quill.
Thankful for the puffs of air in my eyes at the ophthalmologist’s office…
Accompanying the second text, Cure infirmitatum oculorum, in manuscript 10a 135, are diagrams of 18 instruments used to deal with disorders of the eye, organized into six groups. The instruments for cataracts resemble hollow needles. Still used today in cataract surgeries, hollow needles were first utilized for the suction of soft cataracts by physician Ammar Ibn Ali Al-Mosuli (flourished 1010). Read more
“The binder ate my homework!”
This manuscript may be the earliest surviving copy of the works included. The works were previously attributed to Arnald of Villanova (and others), but now is thought to have been composed by unnamed people, likely in the area surrounding the University of Montpellier during the early 14th century. The first text relates how to care for (and perhaps cure?) a woman’s infertility, while the second and third texts discuss how to cure diseases of the eye. The texts are written on paper, rather than parchment.
The pages of the manuscript were trimmed at some point. On some pages, the text and not just the margins have been sliced off. Trimming manuscripts was not uncommon, especially if they were rebound in later centuries into ‘more fashionable’ bindings.
Folio 6 verso shows a later reader’s notes – or the original scribe’s demarcations – with the first bits of the phrases cut off.
