Manuscript from the 13th–14th century. Given by Walter Elvedon. Lower Library, 147/197

This volume of medical tracts is noteworthy for a tract on restorative treatments for the male libido, for a charm to be recited for women in the agonies of childbirth and for a work on surgery entitled Rogeri chirurgia commencing on folio 63 with the incipit ‘Post mundi fabricam’, the letter P being illustrated with a grotesque at its foot and a handsome illumination within its loop.

In the gallery you can see a man being trepanned, or trephined; a man in a red doctor’s gown is applying the trephine to a patient in blue who kneels with his hands bound, for good measure, behind him. The trephine has a curved cross-bar to turn it.

Elvedon was an early member of Gonville Hall, probably a fellow. He was a contemporary of Edmund Gonville and William Bateman. He was an early benefactor to us and to Trinity Hall at a time when it was believed the two would merge. He died around 1360. Although the first, formal, library premises was not arranged till the 1440s it is clear that Gonville Hall held a small collection of books from its inception.

Reviving epidemiology << Holey intervention >> Awl or nothing