Gripla - 2022, Page 128

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Entangled health, emotion and cognition in AM 194 8vo’s lapidary
The stones described in AM 194 8vo offer a range of aids to humans. This
range is indicative of the degree to which ideas of health, emotion and
cognition were fundamentally entangled in medical approaches to the self
in this period. For example, the properties of the stone Iacinctus span the
emotional and epidemiological: in a single sentence, the scribe tells us that
the stone allows the bearer to travel freely without fear (“o-hreddr”), whilst
also protecting the bearer against plagues (“eigi man þer meina drepsott”).46
The range of applications of stones seen in the lapidary further reflects an
understanding of both physical and cognitive conditions as inherently em-
bodied: since mental change may be induced through physical contact with
stones, the mind is therefore just as rooted in the material world as the body
is and just as subject to influence and interference from this external world.
As touched on above, I organise my discussion of the range of prop-
erties stones exhibit by dividing up these properties into manufactured
categories, such as physiological, social, emotional, cognitive and environ-
mental. By employing these categories I hope to highlight how phenomena
that can appear highly disparate to modern readers were, by contrast, not
categorically distinguished between in medieval medical works: for there
is nothing explicit in the lapidary text nor implicit in its organisation of
material that establishes a distinction between physical, cognitive and so-
cial change, or indeed between healing and enhancing. While the categories
employed are useful insofar as they may help readers grasp the sheer diver-
sity of treatment types in the lapidary, future research should move beyond
these categories in order to pursue a more emic perspective on medieval
concepts of health and self.
Physiological aids (curative and prophylactic)
Stones provide cures for serious physical ailments such as bleeding
(Topacius),47 shivering fever and tumescence through water (Lapis),48
breathing difficulties and liver-illness (Berillus),49 burns (Magnes)50 and
46 AÍ, 80.
47 Ibid.: “rauda-sott.”
48 AÍ, 77: “ridu sottum ok vatn-kalfi.” AM 194 8vo has “Lapis,” while Marbode has “Jaspis”
(Jasper).
49 AÍ, 80: “andar styn […] ok lifur­verk.”
50 AÍ, 81: “vid bruna.”