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Reviewed by:
  • Anglo-Saxon Medicine
  • Walton O. Schalick III
M. L. Cameron. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, no. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xii + 211 pp. $59.95.

“Ringe man þir gebeð on þ re man ðrincan þille nygan riþan ond pater noster nigan fiþan.” 1 Anglo-Saxon medicine has been plagued by the impression left by such prescriptions upon modern readers, suggesting the “irrational” characteristics of Old English medicine and overwhelming its “rational” and “practical” qualities. Perhaps falling prey to the dictum advanced in 1820 by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams that Anglo-Saxon “would reward amply the few weeks alone which would be requisite for its attainment,” 2 the learned from Charles Singer to J. H. G. Grattan have lionized the irrational elements, while downplaying the rational. While Joseph Payne was a quiet voice in 1904 decrying such attitudes, only recently have scholars like Linda Voigts, D. G. Scragg, Audrey Meaney, [End Page 142] and Marilyn Deegan, to name a few, overturned most of the arguments advanced by the old guard. M. L. Cameron has been prominent among this revisionist group. A biologist by training, Cameron has acquired a solid grounding both in Anglo-Saxon and in medical history, becoming one of the more prolific authorities on Old English medicine today. Anglo-Saxon Medicine is at once a synthesis and an extension of his work.

The subjects of his chapters include the physical environment engendering disease in the Anglo-Saxon world, medical practice, the texts and sources available, Anglo-Saxon and Latin collections and translations of those texts, the compilation of Old English leechbooks, the materia medica available to the Old English, rational and magical elements of Anglo-Saxon medicine, humoral medicine, and the more practical subjects of bloodletting, surgery, and obstetrics/gynecology. Four appendices provide more extensive Latin and Anglo-Saxon quotations translated in the preceding chapters. A nine-page index (which is only fair) concludes the book.

Cameron’s introductory survey covers a broad range of topics within the subject, giving reasonable depth for the beginner, while providing suggestive references to the literature to facilitate further study. In twelve of the fourteen core chapters, he deftly summarizes his own work and that of others on Old English medicine, while suggestively tweaking that current knowledge. Although specialists will note omissions of a sometimes significant character in the footnotes, Anglo-Saxon Medicine represents an even-handed and up-to-date survey. Two chapters (12 and 13), on the “rational” and “magical” elements in Old English medicine, even extend our knowledge by continuing the work of Guido Majno in inquiring which remedies actually are biomedically efficacious for prescribed illnesses; for example, several remedies prescribe mixing in a copper or brass bowl, thus generating truly antibacterial copper salts.

However, there are several challenges to the work’s value. First, Cameron’s desire to overturn his predecessors’ prejudices sometimes permits a subtle overlaying of modern medical interpretation onto earlier medicine, as in his discussion of the spleen (p. 18). Furthermore, his principle of using modern herbal recommendations to tease out the value of medieval ones is a very delicate business. His choice of Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (a twentieth-century text) in particular, is not explained, and the effect of the intervening 1,000 years on those recommendations is not considered.

A second difficulty is reference-based. Most scholars of Anglo-Saxon medicine will recoil at Cameron’s documentation. His bibliography includes only fifty-four items, modestly excluding even some of his own significant publications. His footnotes expand this list to some 154, including fourteen manuscript sources. Nevertheless, several important pieces are omitted, and the use of appropriate citations in footnotes is at best sporadic. Especially in the chapter on rational medicine, more extensive reference to modern pharmaco-chemical literature would aid those who follow Professor Cameron’s careful study of the efficacy of various herbs. At times, the book is poorly served by its editor, as when one Latin footnote is unattributed (p. 49, n. 5), though presumably from the previous citation. In another note (p. 50, n. 8), Studien und Texte is cited puzzlingly, but [End Page 143] presumably refers to...

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