Medical recipes against strangury and dysuria, 13th century
/Two medical recipes written down by a monk-scribe of St Andrew’s Priory, Rochester, are today part of the single bound volume known as Custumale Roffense (c. 1235), or the Rochester custumal. Transcription of Custumale Roffense 4r-5r by Jacob Scott (reviewed by Dr Christopher Monk). Translation and commentary by Dr Christopher Monk. Clearly unrelated in subject matter to the custumal, which is a survey of tenants’ rents, services and customs, they were nevertheless deemed important enough to preserve. It is very likely that the monks of St Andrew’s Priory were prone to suffer from common health problems. This may partially explain why the following medical recipes for urinary and skin conditions were preserved by the monks and, at some point, bound with the custumal. Among the monks there would likely have been individuals who at some point had studied medical texts that were circulating in England at the time the recipes were penned. These monks would have been practiced in using herbs grown in the priory gardens (and possibly beyond) in order to treat the sick. They would have collaborated with the priory’s infirmary attendants, the duties of whom are outlined in a further section added to the custumal on the subject of the priory’s lay servants. The method of the first recipe for treating strangury and dysuria – painful urinary conditions – is self-evidently for male patients, which is of course what we would expect in a community of monks. The second recipe for ulceration and abrasions may have been relevant to the treatment of ‘leprosy’ – an umbrella term in medieval medicine that corresponds today to a number of diseases affecting the skin, but evidently also Hansen’s Disease, the preferred modern name for leprosy.1 The significance of this is that the priory established the hospital of Saint Bartholomew in Chatham (on the outskirts of Rochester), at least as early as the 1120s, which according to one contemporaneous source was ‘built for lepers’.2 Pertinently, symptoms of tuberculoid leprosy may include ulceration and fissured skin – cuts, sores and abrasions – which easily become infected.3 The two medical recipes are completed by a short invocation in a mix of Anglo-Norman French and Latin and an instruction to recite the Lord’s Prayer. It is likely that these would have been said whilst the treatments were being administered.
Transcription
Contra4 stranguriam et dysuriam. Accipe
radicem Raffani, et tere, et deinde decoquo-
que in uino albo et oderifero cum Radice vismalue5
usque ad tertiam partem liquoris decoque. In fine decoc-
tionis, appone furfur triticeum et fac emplastrum,
et circumliga uirilem uirgam, ita calidum quam
paciens pati possit. Istud emplastrum faciendum est
per triduum ad cubitum. Istud emplastrum per furfur suf-
ficienter inspissetur.
tapsum barbastem quod gallice dicitur moleine6
et summitates rumminis7 salicet, Runce, et tanacetum
agreste, et consolidam maiorem, et centinodium.
Istis herbis optime decoctis in bersise; bibat paciens
mane et sero. Sed prius inungat paciens locum dolen-
tem oleo laurino. Deus te feznerent oil e buche treis te destez-
nent pere e fiz e seinte espirit.8 In nomine pa-
tris et filij et spiriti sancti. Amen. Pater noster. Hoc-
ter dicendum est.
Translation
To counter strangury9 and dysuria.10 Take and grind a radish root, and then boil it in white spiced wine along with the root of marsh-mallow until you reduce the liquor to a third. Into the final decoction add wheat bran and make a poultice, and wrap around the virile rod,11 as hot as the patient can endure. This poultice should be applied for three days at rest. The poultice may be sufficiently thickened by bran.
To counter ulceration and abrasions. Take tapsus barbastus, which in French is called mullein, and the tops of the bramble, namely blackberries, and wild tansy and comfrey and knotgrass. These herbs are best decocted in a barley malt liquor. The patient should drink this in the morning and evening; but first the patient should rub the painful spot with laurel oil.
God bless you and open your eye and mouth entirely [to the]12 Father and Son and Holy Spirit.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Our Father must be said today.13
Footnotes
1 See Winston Black (ed.), Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West: A History in Documents (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2020) p. 201.
2 Though Gundulf, monk-bishop of Rochester (1077-1108), is traditionally seen as the founder of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, this is a fourteenth-century attribution. An early thirteenth-century register from Rochester priory (similar in content to and slightly earlier than Custumale Roffense), located now in the British Library (Vespasian MS A. XXII), attributes the building of the chapel associated with the hospital to Hugh of Trottiscliffe (’Hugo de Trotescliue’), a Rochester monk and later abbot of St Augustine, Canterbury (1126-1151). See Colin Flight, The Bishops and Monks of Rochester 1076-1214 (Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society, 1997), p. 211; and Richard Sharpe, David X. Carpenter, and Hugh Doherty, ‘Chatham Hospital: Hospital of St Bartholomew; dependency of Rochester cathedral priory’, Charters of William II and Henry I Project, actswilliam2henry1.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/h1-chatham-hosp-2014-1.pdf.
3 Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), p. 2.
4 A scribe would have completed the medical texts by inserting large red initials (C, C, and D) into the spaces that have been left, but this was clearly forgotten.
5 ‘vismalue’, a corrupt medieval Latinisation of Anglo-Norman wimalve (variant of guimave), i.e. the marsh-mallow plant (Althaea officinalis); cf. Bismalva in Tony Hunt, Plant Names of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), p. 52.
6 The scribe has made an untidy correction to give what is probably meant to be ‘moleine’, i.e. Old French for ‘mullein’.
7 ‘rumminis’ appears to be an error. The intended meaning is ‘of the bramble’; see rhamnus in the online Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources [accessed 27 July 2023].
8 The transcription of the Anglo-Norman is not entirely satisfactory, due to the creases in the manuscript at this point.
9 Strangury is blockage or irritation at the base of the bladder resulting in very painful urination and a strong desire to urinate.
10 Dysuria is painful or difficult urination.
11 A euphemism for the penis.
12 Due in part to the transcription difficulties related to the creases in the manuscript, the translation of the Anglo-Norman to this point is somewhat unsatisfactory and at some stage may need amending.
13 The ‘Our Father’ (Latin, ‘Pater noster’), i.e. the Lord’s Prayer, or Paternoster.
