English Medicine in the Anglo-Saxon Times (c. 1904) - Joseph Frank Payne

English Medicine in the Anglo-Saxon Times

Joseph Frank Payne | 1904 | Historical illustrated PDF facsimile

Long before the modern pharmacy, England's healers worked with herbs, charms, spoken blessings and the rhythms of the natural world. In this fascinating 1904 study, physician and medical historian Joseph Frank Payne opens the surviving manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon England to reveal how medicine, folklore and belief intertwined.

Originally delivered as the Fitz-Patrick Lectures before the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1903, this illustrated book explores early English medical literature, including the Leechbook of Bald and the Anglo-Saxon Herbarium associated with Apuleius.

Discover inside

• The Nine Herbs Charm: an extraordinary healing poem in which mugwort and other plants are invoked as powerful allies.
• Medicine by moonlight: accounts of bloodletting timed according to the phases of the moon.
• Healing charms and amulets: curious practices involving spoken words, objects, animals and the symbolic transfer of illness.
• Early English herb lore: discussions of mugwort, yarrow, mandrake, plantain and other medicinal plants, alongside illustrations drawn from manuscripts.
• England's earliest medical books: an introduction to the practitioners known as 'leeches' and the surviving sources of Anglo-Saxon medicine.

Payne examines these traditions as a historian: the remedies and rituals he describes belong to much earlier manuscripts, not to medical practice in 1904. For anyone fascinated by hedgecraft, old herbal traditions, healing words and the roots of English folk medicine, this is a compelling doorway into the past.

Publication details

Author: Joseph Frank Payne, M.D.
Full title: English Medicine in the Anglo-Saxon Times
Lectures delivered: 1903
First published: Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1904
Illustrations: 23, including reproductions of historical manuscripts and botanical images
Format: Downloadable PDF facsimile
Collection: The Ancestral Library

Historical and safety notice: This work is offered for education, research and historical interest. It documents ancient and medieval medical beliefs, charms and remedies, some of which are unverified or dangerous. It is not medical guidance; do not attempt the historical treatments or use them in place of professional healthcare.

For keepers of botanical lore and seekers of the forgotten history of healing.