Books in the Middle and Early Modern English Texts series

The present edition offers the diplomatic transcription of MS Wellcome 542, housing a late Middle English hitherto unedited remedy-book based on the medical lore of Hippocrates, Socrates and Galen. A glossary, notes and introduction also accompany the edition. The introduction has been conceived as a state of the art of this scientific treatise, and deals with the textual transmission of the text, a codicological/palaeographic description together with the scribe's dialect and idiolect. The edition therefore conforms itself as a primary source for research not only in Historical Linguistics but also in other related fields such as the History of Medicine or Ecdotics.

The volume is the first modern edition of the 1373 Middle English herbal by John Lelamour, as contained in London, British Library, MS Sloane 5, ff. 13r-57r. The edition is critical and is accompanied by an introduction on the authorship, sources, language and history of the text, a number of explanatory notes, a glossary and several appendixes.