Index of Medieval Medical Images (IMMI) - Vermont Herbal (Vermont MS.2)

"An unusual manuscript deriving from the last stages of illuminated manuscript production, which coincided with the early stages of printing, is now in the library of the University of Vermont. Vermont MS.2 is an herbal in Italian. Completed about 1500, its illustrations include paintings of "Adam and Eve" (fol. 34r), snakes, a rabbit hunt, crumbling castles, a scene demonstrating the administration of an enema, and odd plants, seemingly stuck hither and yon with little reference to the text ([all found on] fol. 69r)."

- Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Conference in the Renaissance (1982 : Northampton, Mass.). The rational arts of living : Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Conference in the Renaissance, 1982 /, edited by A.C. Crombie and Nancy Siraisi. Northampton, Mass. : Dept. of History of Smith College, 1987. 254 p. : ill., facsims., maps ; 23 cm. Series title: Smith College studies in history ; v. 50., p. 174.

Blunt and Raphael called the herbal's illustrations "as amusing as they are perplexing." (The Illustrated Herbal, 1979, p. 85) We in the IMMI project were much intrigued by the herbal's remarkable use of angel and demon figures to indicate benevolent and destructive properties in the plants and the diseases they cure. In addition, the illustrations include several sufferers from skin lesions, inflammations and other complaints.

The designation, "Vermont MS.2" is taken from the record in Salvatore de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, Vol. II, p. 2168 (Call No. Z 6620 U5 R359c 1961 {UCLA Biomedical Library History Division, Reference Colllection}). That record reads:

2. (580.9 M 31- 45.716) Herbal in Italian. Pap.(ca.1500), 141 ff. (33 x 32), lacking f. 1; some leaves with an earlier numbering ascending to 127. Each plant illustrated in colors; 3 miniat. in lower margins, one labelled "Arghomento" portraying a rabbit hunt(f. 69r) XVIIIth c. marbled paper boards. Additions to the text in several hands mostly Italian, a few in English-- N. 2437, replaced by 1323, in an English or American sale: owned by L.E.C. [Lucius Eugene Chittenden, Register of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln] 49 E. 65th St. [New York].

These images from Vermont MS.2 are presented with the kind permission of Mr. Connell Gallagher, librarian of the Bailey/Howe Library of the University of Vermont.