Migraine in Gilbertus Anglicus' Compendium medicinae. The cases of MS Sloane 3486 and Wellcome MS 537

Abstract

Migraine is a common neurological disorder that has deserved attention since Antiquity. The English physician Gilbertus Anglicus dedicated a separate chapter of his thirteenth-century Compendium medicinae to it, which was then reproduced in some medical manuscripts from the later Middle Ages. MS Sloane 3486 and Wellcome MS 537 are two extant Middle English translations of the Latin exemplar composed by the end of the fifteenth century. This work will analyze how their copyists reduced Anglicus' long theoretical dissertations on the aetiology and semiology of migraine, in order to emphasize the real therapeutic needs of a nonuniversity-trained audience.