Digitisation of medical manuscripts (360G-Wellcome-104045_Z_14_A)

The medical collection at Pembroke consists of seven bound volumes of manuscripts, dating from the early twelfth to the fifteenth century, each containing a mixture of texts. They appear to have been bound at approximatelythe same time, and possibly by a local binder. It is thought that they may have been in the possession of Thomas Clayton (1575-1647), the Master of Broadgates Hall, and later Pembroke College, and who was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. The manuscripts are written on a mixture of parchment and vellum in a range ofhands. Most of the pages are in good condition, many have tabs cut from the side for ease of reference. Six are of a similar size, about 22cm high, with one being considerably smaller at 15cm. All are bound in white parchment whichhas dried and warped considerably, making the original binding extremely tight. They range from 108 to 230 folios in length, with the smaller volume having 278 folios. A large number of the texts are recipes, mostly from well-known medieval sources, and annotated with a number of marginalia. There are also inserted pages or notes at various points where either the compiler or the original owner has added to the text. As well as the recipes and lists of herbs, there are urine charts and two diagrams, one of the Zodiac and the other of the human brain. These texts are fairly typical of the medical canon of their time, and are particularly useful to scholars studying the dissemination of information through the medieval world. They can be used to trace the spread of particularcopies of medieval medical texts, and compared with other known texts in orderto establish the most likely original versions. Very little work has been doneon the Pembroke manuscripts beyond a brief description, and digitisation wouldmake them available to a wider world of scholarship for study and comparison. The final project would be to digitise all seven of the manuscripts, as well as carrying out important conservation work on them. While the binding is currently in reasonable condition, it has become very stiff, making the books themselves difficult to open. If they continue to be used, the binding will deteriorate, and so digital images would save the books from unnecessary stress. They are also currently unboxed, and relatively unprotected, which maycontribute to future deterioration. In order to ensure that the manuscripts are suitable for digitisation and to establish what, if any, conservation work is required, we need to first undertake a conservation survey, which will help us with the final digitisation project.