For one of my classes, I’ve been doing a little research on Beowulf, which leads to all kinds of academic articles on the general literary scene of the Middle Ages. In one of the articles I was reading, I noticed a reference to a tenth-century medical encyclopedia known as Bald’s Leechbook.
The name is really what got me. I don’t even know that this was the only Leechbook around at that time (though there certainly weren’t many), which gives me the impression that “leechbook” was a medieval synonym for “medical reference book.” I like imagining this sort of thing on a physician’s bookshelf today, next to one of the countless medical reference books now in print.
The illustration here isn’t from Bald’s Leechbook; it’s a medieval illumination of a contemporary dentist. I’ll be visiting my 21st-century counterpart Wednesday morning, in fact. I don’t think they stock the Leechbook, nor have they continued the practice of wearing a necklace of human teeth (if that ever actually was common practice; at least one monk seems to have thought so).
