"This Booke of Sovereign Medicines".... Collected of Maister Doctour ffecknam late Abbott of Westmynster

In my review ¹ of Prospecting for Drugs in Ancient and Medieval European Texts, edited by Bart K. Holland, I drew attention to Elizabeth Macgill’s essay on a vernacular collection of remedies compiled by the last abbot of Westminster Abbey, John Feckenham, ca. 1570, while a prisoner in the Tower of London. It should be noted that in 1990 Macgill published an edition of the Folger MS. Feckenham’s manuscript is a document of extraordinary interest for historians of medieval and Renaissance medicine, botany, religion, society, and language. It represents a very long tradition of monastic medicine, but also shows how flexible and pragmatic that tradition could be: Feckenham included, for instance, remedies suggested by women in his family. In addition to transcribing, annotating, and collating the work with the four other known copies that circulated among exiled Benedictine communities, Macgill has provided an interesting introduction. Helpful appendices list Feckenham’s plant names, their probable modern scientific names (checked by the botanist James L. Reveal), and substances imported and sold by apothecaries, including New World plants and locally obtained ingredients. Unfortunately, personal circumstances prevented Macgill from including an index or reproducing pages from the manuscripts.