The commonplace book of Thomas Fayreford, a fifteenth-century physician who worked in Gloucestershire, Oxford, Somerset and Devon. This manuscript is notable for including a list of his patients and medical cases.
Date: s. xvin
Scribes: Thomas Fayreford
Medieval owners: Thomas Fayreford
Original location or linguistic profile: Gloucestershire, Oxford, Somerset and Devon
Magic Category: charms, medical
Specific magic texts: Charms for blessing an herb; wounds; pain of head, abscess, gout; spot in the eye; nosebleed; toothache; bone caught in the throat; sore throat; poison; paralysis and epilepsy; excessive menstrual flow; childbirth; conception; epilepsy; demon; fevers; staunching blood; bite or puncture; spasm; gout; a miracle cure. There is also directions to fix a toothache using natural magic.
Charm motifs: Adonay. Emanuel
Ananizapta
Caro caruce
ecce crucem
ililir.ilililr.ilililr.
Jaspar Melchior Balthasar
Longinus miles
Pater est
Recede demon
Rex Pax Nax
St. Nicasse
Tres boni fratres
Virga Apollonia
Online Information: A detailed record from the BL Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
Digitised: Yes, on the British Library Digitised Manuscripts site
Bibliography: Laura Mitchell. “The Cultural Uses of Magic in Fifteenth-century England.” PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2011.
Peter Murray Jones. “Harley MS 2558: A Fifteenth-Century Medical Commonplace Book”. Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays. Ed. Margaret R. Schleissner. Garland Medieval Casebooks, 8 (New York: Garland, 1995), 35-54.
—. “Thomas Fayreford: An English Fifteenth-Century Medical Practitioner”. Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease. Ed. Roger French and others (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 156-83 (pp. 166-67).
—. “Witnesses to medieval medical practice in the Harley collection.” Electronic British Library Journal 8 (2008): 1-13.
Lea T. Olsan. “Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice.” Social History of Medicine 16:3 (2003): 343-366.
—. “Charms in Medieval Memory.” In Charms and Charming in Europe. Edited by Jonathan Roper. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 59-90.
Late Medieval English Magic 