Bald's Leechbook

Bald's Leechbook (also known as Medicinale Anglicum) is a medical text in Old English and Medieval Latin probably compiled in the mid-tenth century,[1] possibly under the influence of Alfred the Great's educational reforms.

[6]: vol I ch 13 p57 [7]: vol I ch 13 p56 Cameron also notes that of the Old English medical compilations "Leechbook III reflects most closely the medical practice of the Anglo-Saxons while they were still relatively free of Mediterranean influences," in contrast to Bald's Leechbook, which "shows a conscious effort to transfer to Anglo-Saxon practice what one physician considered most useful in native and Mediterranean medicine," and the Lacnunga, which is "a sort of commonplace book with no other apparent aim than to record whatever items of medical interest came to the scribe's attention".

[5]: 35 Oswald Cockayne, who edited and translated the Leechbook in 1865, made note in his introduction of what he termed "a Norse element" in the text, and gave as example words such as torbegete, rudniolin, ons worm, and Fornets palm.

The remedy for shingles comprised a potion using the bark of 15 trees: aspen, apple, maple, elder, willow, sallow, myrtle, wych elm, oak, blackthorn, birch, olive, dogwood, ash, and quickbeam.

[10][11] It has been suggested that a lot can be learned from medieval medicine because wounds must have been ubiquitous in agrarian societies: "If you cut yourself with a scythe, it was highly likely that you'd get an infection."