Approaching the Middle English Equine Veterinary Treatises

This book presents ways of working with the four extant Middle English treatises on horses and horse care, namely “Medicines for Horses,” “The Boke of Marchalsi,” “Sloane Treatise on Horse,” and “Horse-Leeching.”

The first chapter addresses the treatises as a collection, showing how they follow from an older European tradition, and explores what these texts suggest about the state of veterinary science and understanding in England during the late Middle Ages. The second chapter describes the sources themselves, focusing on their contents, the types of “commonplace” books in which they tended to appear – and what this suggests about their intended users – and their various current locations. The first case study discusses one approach to ascertaining what comprises a specific treatise - i.e. because this type of treatise is composed of many individual “recipes” or “items” typical of a medical text, the witnesses may greatly differ in terms of content and organisation - and establish the relationships among the witnesses to each treatise. The second case study focuses on the language of the treatise. It begins by looking at structure of medical recipes in general, then how this structure also applies to hippiatric treatises. It addresses the language that is unique to the horse treatises – and which also has often not been defined by either the Middle English Dictionary or Oxford English Dictionary.

Approaching the Middle English Equine Veterinary Texts is a useful resource for postgraduate students and researchers who are encountering source material for the first time, and researchers in the field of the history of veterinary medicine.