Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts

📖 The Scoop

Drawing on the wealth of medical illustration to be found in medieval manuscripts, Peter Murray Jones traces the history of medieval medicine, the artistic traditions which shaped its depiction and the changing attitudes and beliefs of both medical and artistic practitioners. This beautifully produced book is a revised, colour-illustrated version of the long out-of-print Medieval Medical Miniatures first published by The British Library in 1984.

Some of the manuscripts illustrated are famous because of the quality of their design and splendour of illumination, but most medical illustration was not work of such refinement and consequently has been largely ignored by historians of art. For the historian of medicine, however, these ordinary manuscripts are just as interesting as the select few because they tell so much of what it must have been like to study and practise the healing arts in medieval times, as well as providing evidence of the changing role of the book in medicine.

The colour reproductions presented here reveal the extraordinary range and diversity in subject-matter and style of these illustrations. Peter Murray Jones provides the context, considering each picture as an integral part of the manuscript in which it is found, and interpreting it as a document of medical history.

Genre: Art / History / General (fancy, right?)