Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 220
218 GRIPLA
text runs continuously throughout in a single column, with occasional
pen-flourished black initials and without headings. The medical material
appears on twelve leaves (37r–48v). The section includes an introduction,
a short chapter on prognostics (the signs of death), on seasonal regimens
(a monthly calendar of diet and bloodletting), a section on diseases and
cures, herbal pharmacology, and a lapidary. The manuscript was edited
and published by Kristian Kålund in 1908 with an extensive introduction
in Danish.44
AM 434 a 12mo is a charming, almost miniature, medical book the size
of a hand, dated to c. 1450–1500. It contains forty leaves, but the beginning
is missing. Despite its small size, the text is written neatly in two columns,
heavily abbreviated. Most articles start with a pen-flourished initial in red
and other colours, some of them large and decorated. The manuscript con-
tains charms and conjurations (along with some magic runes and symbols),
a section on prognostics and seasonal regimens, diseases and cures, herbal
pharmacology, a chapter on hydrotherapy (on the benefits of baths), a
short section on physiology and embryology (about the development of the
foetus), information on infertility, and a lunar prognostication (prognoses
according to the lunar day). This manuscript contains much of the text of
the medical book in AM 194 8vo and nearly all the text of 655 in almost
the same order. However, neither of these two manuscripts is the exemplar
of 434.45 Both 434 and 655 contain clauses that do not appear in the other,
and 434 often contains a better reading. The text was published by Kristian
Kålund in 1907 with a thorough introduction in Danish.46
Royal Irish Academy 23 D 43 (hereafter: D) is the most recent and most
extensive of the six manuscripts, dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, in octavo size (146 x 114 mm). It is an attractive manuscript, neatly
written in a single column, with rubrics and coloured, pen-flourished
initials. All the other Old Norse medical books contain sections that are
also found in this manuscript. The manuscript contains ten gatherings,
of which two are incomplete, or seventy-four leaves in total. It comprises
charms and conjurations, a herbal pharmacology with a section on phle-
botomy, prognostics, seasonal regimen of diet and bloodletting, a section
44 Ibid.
45 See, Kålund, Den islandske lægebog, 360.
46 Ibid.