This is an important and impressive volume of essays on the cultural and literary impact of Henry Daniel. While it focuses mostly on his influence on medical writing in the vernacular, it nevertheless demonstrates the role of medical discourse in the emergence of Middle English as a literary language. Clearly and logically organised, the volume draws from an impressive range of leading scholars who engage with a diverse set of topics: textual history; philology; medical history; and the history of science and scientific writing. It begins with Sarah Star’s excellent introduction, which is both comprehensive and a model of clarity. In it, Star charts the various contexts in which the volume will proceed, outlining the precise contributions each essay makes. This orientates the reader perfectly, but also allows for more targeted engagements with the volume.
Matters proceed with Faith Wallis’s chapter on the “Latin Traditions of Uroscopy.” In it, she focuses on the importance of uroscopy itself, specifically its complex status at the medical division between theory and practice. The chapter charts the development of the science and indeed practice of uroscopy from the Hippocratic Aphorisms to the work of Theophilus and Isaac Judaeus, Giles de Corbeil, Avicenna, and to Henry Daniel. It is an exceptional overview of these core textual developments, and showcases Wallis’s vast knowledge of the field and its nuances. Moreover, Wallis deftly shows who was reading whom, and the crucial textual transformations that occurred in this form of medieval medicine. The sections on the move to Latin verse as opposed to prose are compelling, and I would have liked to read more--but space is always a finite resource in edited volumes. The chapter is a marvel of compression, as Wallis synthesises a vast range of sources into a lucid and intelligible history interspersed with some excellent puns (19, 20).
Winston Black’s excellent essay on the Aaron Danielis, “Translation, Comparison, and Adaptation: Latin Verse Herbals and Henry Daniels” is next, and focuses on issues of translation from Latin into English, and from poetry into prose. This is an interesting distinction, and I fully support it--a verse herbal is simply a different beast from a prose treatise and should be understood accordingly. Black then offers us a review of the various manuscript contexts, and textual histories, of the key source text. This is a deft and erudite summary, useful both to advanced graduate students and scholars. The central arc of the essay traces the compositional mentality of Daniel’s herbal, highlighting various key choices in the inclusion of material from the source text, and speculating on possible reasons for them. Particular attention is paid to the more nuanced elements of Daniel’s translation--issues of tone and tenor, and the level of detail. Black then offers a fascinating account of the use of censorship when it comes to matters of birth control, ending with the delicious note that translation results in a transformation of “an aphrodisiac into an anaphrodisiac” (53). It is an excellent and learned essay, one that will be of immense use to those interested in medieval medicine, and in the process of medieval translation and adaptation. Throughout, the author shows clearly how this work ought to be carried out--with precision and vigour.
No volume on Middle English medicine would be complete without the work of Peter Murray Jones. Here, he writes on “Henry Daniel and his medical contemporaries in England.” This is a novel chapter that provides vital context to Daniel’s work, and that allows a more nuanced and detailed appreciation of Middle English medical writing to be carried out. The focus is on friars and the nexus between medicine and religion. In it, Murray Jones explores a key developmental context to Daniel’s work, one that allows the importance of Daniel’s decision to write in Middle English to be more clearly understood. The chapter ends with a useful comparison between Daniel’s herbal and the work of the Franciscan friar William Holme.
E. Ruth Harvey’s “Textual Layers in the Liber Uricrisiarum” is next, and begins the book’s section on “texts and legacy.” The author explores the innovations Daniel creates through the Liber Uricrisiarum, which “introduces into English the learned treatise.” A bold claim to be sure, but one that the author supports through an exemplary engagement with the textual history of a centrally important medical text. The essay offers a wonderfully clear set of divisions to trace the complex textual history of the Liber Uricrisiarum: proto alpha; first revision; alpha; beta text; beta star or revised beta text. While the author is keen to point out that all this is preliminary, it is clearly also the result of careful and painstaking work. Each sub-section begins with a useful overview of the various manuscripts that comprise each core version of the text--invaluable to anyone doing research in this area. After this, the essay moves to consider some key themes and issues in Daniel’s work: astrology; phthisis (the medieval term for tuberculosis); Daniel’s own medicine; and women and sex. This last section will be of great interest to those researching the history of sexuality, as it offers clear statements about conception and the medieval understanding of the necessary pleasures of sex. Moreover, the author also notes the instances when these comments are omitted by scribes of Daniel’s text. It is an excellent chapter which will be of broad interest to many.
Teresa Tavormina comes next, with her chapter on “The Heirs of Henry Daniel; The Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Legacy of the Liber Uricrisiarum.” In it, the author looks to the lasting impact of Daniel’s text, with particular reference to how it influenced the next generation of Middle English medical writing. This survey of the later reworkings of the text takes us chronologically through manuscripts that offer short excerpts to those that are more expansive, and even those later examples that constitute full adaptations of the Liber Uricrisiarum. It is an excellent chapter which demonstrates the abiding influence of Daniel’s text and how it underwent changes in each phase of adaption. While Tavormina notes it was never expanded beyond its vast size, the LiberUricrisiarum nevertheless acted as a touchstone text for those interested in uroscopy for centuries and reveals much of what later audiences sought in terms of abridged adaptations. The impact that the text had in terms of historical linguistics is also mentioned, though only briefly. Finally, a helpful set of appendices rounds out an excellent piece of scholarship.
The next chapter is Hannah Bower’s “The Function of Anecdote in Henry Daniel’s Liber Uricrisiarum,” in which the author offers an exemplary exploration of medicine and narrative theory. Specifically, Bower looks at how medical anecdotes operate in terms of narrative, and how they impact Daniel’s writings: she deftly shows the complex and nuanced relationship Daniel avows between experience and written authority. Her assertion that case histories are complex, and so require “modern readers to rethink traditional ways of reading case narratives” (138), is wholly justified and supported by some delicious close readings. Each showcases the author’s superb eye for detail and ability with practical criticism. The four core case studies are all very engaging and engagingly analysed and highlight the role the narrative voice of both the practitioner and the patient can play. The author ends by showing the central interplay between certainty and uncertainty in a text aimed at teaching--demonstrating that this genre of writing can be as surprising as it is complex.
The final chapter is Sarah Star’s “The Almost Latin Medical Language of Late Medieval England.” It is more linguistic in focus, and explores the impact of Daniel’s Latin on the development of Middle English itself. This takes the form of listing some of the new words and coinages Daniel brings into the lexicon, and demonstrating how this eventually impacts literary style: the author asserts, convincingly, that this type of Latin borrowing predates and anticipates Lydgate’s own aureate diction. It is this connection between literary language and technical language that the chapter gestures towards. It is excellent work: careful, precise and lucid. The sections on Lydgate are compelling as well, as Star argues that Lydgate establishes a “medical poetics” (166). Careful close readings, which highlight the various lexical contributions made by Daniel and how they have impacted writers like Lydgate, support the chapter’s central argument. The close readings of Lydgate are strong and show convincingly how he uses medical language as an integral part of his aureate style. In a fascinating sub-section, Star notes the key changes in English at the time, and the interesting preference for suffixation over prefixation in the conversion of Latin terms into English ones. It is an excellent essay, with broad appeal, that ends a thoroughly enjoyable volume. Finally, as an appendix, there is a wonderfully useful content guide to reading the Liber Uricrisiarum which, like the volume as a whole, will be invaluable to those researching this text and Middle English medicine.