Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Liagh i n-Eirinn i n-allod III & IV: De Febrium Symptomatibus (Author: [unknown])

p.115

An liaigh i n-Erinn a n-allod. Uimh III.

De Febrium Symptomatibus

THE following six sections are from the RIA MS. 23 P 10, part iii, and are a translation of the portion on the concomitant symptoms of fever ( De Febrium Symptomatibus) in the Rosa Anglica of John of Gaddesden. These items form part of the cure of Tertian Fever. In all mediæval medical books the treatment of disease is divided into the following parts: — caussae, signa, prognostica and curatio. In this particular case, i.e., Tertian Fever, Gaddesden further subdivides curatio into five parts: ‘In curatione febris tertianæ conspiciendum est ad quinque capita. (1) ad digestionem materiæ. (2) ad evacuationem. (3) ad amotionem Dyscrasiæ febrilis. (4) ad accidentia. (6) ad regimen sex rerum non naturalium.’ The fourth of these (‘ad accidentia’) forms our present text. These accidents which are fifteen in all, I will hope to continue in subsequent numbers of Lia Fáil.

The Rosa Anglica was written about 1314 by John of Gaddesden (Johannes Anglicus) who was court physician to Edward II. of England. It was one of the leading text books of medicine in the Middle Ages, though it was never as popular as Bernard of Gordon's work, the Lilium Medicinae. There is another fragmentary copy of this section in the British Museum (now British Library), BL Harl. 546. The Rosa Anglica seems to have been a favourite in Ireland, as various fragmentary copies of the Irish translation exist in MS. in different libraries throughout Ireland and Great Britain, though no complete version has come to light. 23 P 10 is a very beautiful vellum MS., richly illuminated and written in a clear hand with few contractions. It contains a large portion of the Rosa Anglica, 70 pages in all, forming about half of Book I. of the Latin text. The section De Febrium Symptomatibus occupies


p.116

pp. 687–736 of the fourth edition of the Rosa Anglica, from which the appended Latin phrases, etc., have been taken. (See footnotes.)

ÚNA DE BHULF
Mí na Nodlag, 1928.

p.234

An liaigh i n-Erinn a n-allod. Uimh IV.

In the last number of Lia Fáil I stated that I hoped to complete the concomitant symptoms of fever in a later issue. These are contained in the following nine items, along with the section on the six non-naturals referred to by Gaddesden in the opening words on the cure of Tertian Fever (p. 115, Lia Fáil, no. 3).

The MS. is badly damaged on pp. 19/20, 21 /22 where O'Curry suspects it had been chewed by some animal (a rat?) but a piece has also been deliberately cut out with a knife or a pair of scissors on pp. 19/20. As a good many words are missing on these pages I have supplied them from Brit. Mus. now British Library MS. Harl. 346, in square brackets, and have also added the words of the Latin original in footnotes. The glossary contains such words as were not discussed in that of the last issue (pp. 123–125).

Mí na Nodlag, 1931.
Úna De Bhulf