XX 



PREFACE. 



The maau- 

 script. 



mitted that Saxon leeches fell short of the daring skill of 

 Hellas, or the wondrous success of the leading medical 

 men of either branch in London or Paris. Notwith- 

 standing that this is a learned book, it sometimes sinks 

 to mere driveling, The author almost always rejects 

 the Greek recipes, and doctors as an herborist. It 

 will give any one who has the heart of a man in him 

 a thrill of horror to compare the Saxon dose of brook- 

 lime and pennyi'oyal twice a day, for a mother whose 

 child is dead -within her,^ with the chapter in Celsus 

 devoted to this subject, in which we read, as in his 

 inmost soul, an anxious courageous care, and a sense 

 of responsibility mixed with determination to do his 

 utmost, which is, even to a reader, agitating.^ 



The volume consists of two parts ; a treatise on 

 medicine in two books, with its proper colophon at 

 the end, and a third of a somewhat more monkish 

 character. The book itself probably once belonged to 

 the abbey of Glastonbury, for a catalogue of the books 

 of that foundation, cited by Wanley,^ contains the entry 

 " Medicinale Anglicum," which is rightly interpreted, 

 " Saxonice scriptum ;" and this book, rebound in 1757, 

 has preserved on one of the fly leaves an old almost 

 illegible inscription, " Medicinale Anglicum." Search 

 has been made for any record of the books, Avhich, on 

 the dissolution of the monasteries, might have found 

 their way from Glastonbury to the Royal Library, but 

 in vain. 



An earlier, the first, owner is pointed out in the 

 colophon.^ 



Bald habet hunc librum, Gild quem conscribere iussit. 



' Lb. p. 331. 



* Adhibenda curatio est, quce 

 numerari inter difficillimas potest. 

 Nam et summam prudentiam mo- 

 derationemque desiderat, et maxi- 



mum periculum affert. Celsus, VII. 

 xxix. 



=* Hickes, Tliesaur. Vol. II. Pra;f. 

 ad Catalogum. 



* P. 298. 



