Medicines for meny man: The Life and Times of a Middle English Remedybook

FAIN: FT-51863-03

George Keiser
Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS 66506-0100)

My project is a monograph-length study of the Liber de diversis medicinis, a vernacular English remedybook copied from the late 1300s until 1529. It is preserved in sixteen manuscripts, usually miscellanies with a range of works that indicate the tastes and interests of their earliest owners and provide a context for understanding how owners looked upon and used the text. Owing to accretion and abbreviation and to the difficulties of their technical language, the Liber texts vary widely in character. My study will provide a history of these texts and explain their differing character, and it will show how Liber and other books like it addressed the needs of the body and the understanding of disease for their readers.