We complete our look at epilepsy in the Middle Ages by considering how religion and medicine intersect in surviving medical texts and how classical learning was reintroduced by looking at the example of John of Gaddesden, possibly the model for Chaucer’s Doctour of Phisik.
Today’s Texts:
John of Gaddesden. “John of Gaddesden on Epilepsy.” Edited by William G. Lennox, translated by Adrian P. English, Annals of Medical History, vol. 1, no. 3, May 1939, pp. 283-307. Semantic Scholar.
Origen. Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, translated by John Patrick, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9, edited by Allan Menzies, Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896. New Advent, revised and edited by Kevin Knight, www.newadvent.org/fathers/1016.htm
Herbarium. In Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, translated by Thomas Cockayne, vol. 1, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864, pp. 1-325. Archive.org.
Leech Book. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, translated by Thomas Cockayne, vol. 2, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864. Archive.org.
“Life of St. Winefred.” Lives of the Cambro British Saints, of the Fifth and Immediate Succeeding Centuries, from Ancient Welsh & Latin MSS. in the British Museum and Elsewhere, with English Translations, an Explanatory Notes, edited and translated by W. J. Rees, Welsh MSS. Society, 1853, pp. 515-529. Google Books.
References:
Capener, Norman. “John of Gaddesden: and the Crest of the Frederick Coller Surgical Society.” Annals of Surgery, vol. 154, suppl. 6, Dec. 1961, pp. 13-17. DOI: 10.1097/00000658-196112000-00003. PubMed Central.
Dendle, Peter. “Lupines, Manganese, and Devil-Sickness: An Anglo-Saxon Medical Response to Epilepsy.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 75, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 91-101. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44445557
Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. 2nd ed., revised, Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. Archive.org.
Image Credit: The Doctor of Physick, from the Ellesmere manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (Huntington Library EL 26 C 9, via Wikimedia Commons).
This episode we begin a two-part exploration into the understanding and treatment of epilepsy in the middle ages. But to get to the medieval, we have to start with its ancient antecedents, so here in Part 1, we look at texts produced by the Hippocratic school and its later followers.
Today’s Texts:
Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Translated by John Selby Watson and John Mason Good, George Bell & Sons, 1893. Internet Archive.
Wilson, J.V. Kinnier, and E. H. Reynolds, translators. “Translation and Analysis of a Cuneiform Text Forming Part of a Babylonian Treatise on Epilepsy,” Medical History, vol. 34, 1990, pp. 185-198. National Center for Biotechnical Information,www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1036070/
Hippocrates. “On the Sacred Disease.” The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, vol. 2, translated by Francis Adams, Sydenham Society, 1849, pp. 831-858. Google Books.
Galen. “Advice for an Epileptic Boy.” Translated by Owsei Temkin, Texts and Documents, reprinted from Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, vol. 2, no. 3, May 1934, pp. 179-189. Archive.org.
Paulus Ægineta. The Medical Works of Paulus Ægineta, the Greek Physician. Vol. 1, edited and translated by Francis Adams, J. Welsh, 1834. Google Books.
References:
AL-Zwaini, Isam Jaber, and Ban Adbul-Hameed Majeed Albadri. “Epilepsy — The Long Journey of the Sacred Disease.” Epilepsy — Advances in Diagnosis and Therapy, IntechOpen, 2019, pp. 1-10. Academia.edu.
Diamantis, Aristidis, Kalliopi Sidiropoulou, and Emmanouil Magiorkinis. “Epilepsy during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.” Journal of Neurology, vol. 257, 2010, pp. 691-698. DOI: 10.1007/s00415-009-5433-7. Academia.edu.
Katz, Arnold M. “Knowledge of Circulation Before William Harvey.” Circulation, vol. 15, May 1957, pp. 726-734. American Heart Association.
Patel, Puja, and Solomon L. Moshé. “The evolution of the concepts of seizures and epilepsy: What’s in a name?” Epilepsia Open, vol. 5, 2020, pp. 22-35. DOI: 10.1002/EPI4.12375. Academia.edu.
Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. 2nd ed., revised, Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. Archive.org.
Image Credits:
Babylonian tablet on epilepsy (British Museum, Tablet 47753, obverse, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
As a follow-up to our 2025 saint’s-life generating Advent Calendar game, we hear an actual medieval saint’s life and discuss how we get some of our saintly terminology. You’ll also find out where you can get a downloadable version of the Advent Calendar game!
Today’s Texts:
“Life of St. Winefred.” Lives of the Cambro British Saints, of the Fifth and Immediate Succeeding Centuries, from Ancient Welsh & Latin MSS. in the British Museum and Elsewhere, with English Translations, an Explanatory Notes, edited and translated by W. J. Rees, Welsh MSS. Society, 1853, pp. 515-529. Google Books.
“The Miracles of St. Winifred’s Well.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 1762, 13 Oct. 1894, p. 829. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20230146
The Rule of St. Benedict. Translated by D. Oswald Hunter Blair, 2nd ed., Sands & Co,m 1907. Google Books.
References:
Dendle, Peter. “Lupines, Manganese, and Devil-Sickness: An Anglo-Saxon Medical Response to Epilepsy.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 75, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 91-101. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44445557
Head, Thomas. “Hagiography.” Reprinted from ORB: the On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies, 1999. Hagiography Society, 2013, www.hagiographysociety.org/?page_id=678
Keune, Jon. “Comparative vs. Hagiology: Two Variant Approaches to the Field.” Religious Studies, vol. 10, no. 10, 14 Oct. 2019, p. 575. MDPI, doi.org/10.3390/rel10100575
Stumpe, Lynne Heidi. “Display and Veneration of Holy Relics at St Winefriede’s Well and Stonyhurst.” Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 22, Dec. 2009, pp. 63-81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41417138
In this prelude appendix to our episode on saint’s lives, we hear versions of the life of St. Valentine from three different medieval sources.
Today’s Texts:
First English edition of the Nuremberg chronicle: being the Liber chronicarum of Dr. Hartmann Schedel. Edited and translated by Kosta Hadavas, U of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, 2023, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/3SXNV3NHBQLFQ8J [used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.]
Jacobus de Voragine. “Life of S. Valentine.” In The Golden Legend, or Lives of the Saints. Translated by William Caxton, edited by F.S. Ellis, vol. 3, J.M. Dent, 1900, pp. 42-45. Google Books.
Bede. Martyrologium de Natalitiis Sanctorum. In Patrologia Latina, edited by J.-P. Migne, vol. 94, col. 840A-842B, 1862. Google Books.
As we enter the season of elves and Christmas spirits, we follow up on our fairy theme from last episode with a look at the famous 16th-century German hausgeist, Hinzelmann the Kobold — but don’t call him that to his face!
Today’s Texts:
Keightley, Thomas. The Fairy Mythology. E.G. Bohn, 1850. Google Books.
Der vielförmige Hintzelmann oder umbständliche und merckwürdige Erzehlung von einem Geist, so sich auf dem Hause Hudemühlen, und hernach zu Estrup im Lande Lüneburg unter vielfältigen Gestalten. Leipzig, 1704. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Deutsche Sagen. Berlin, 1816. Google Books.
References:
Bullen, Barrie. “Before the Ouija board: William Rossetti’s Diary Gives an Insight into Victorian Séances.” The Conversation, 23 Dec. 2021.
Dorson, Richard M. “The First Group of British Folklorists.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 68, no. 267, 1955, pp. 1-8. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/537105
Music credit: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101, composed in 1816 (same year as the publication of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen), performed by Paul Pitman (CC-PD). Musopen.
For our eleventh anniversary episode, we follow the fairy path of the redcap, from recent cinema through tabletop gaming, into Victorian folklorists and Romantic balladeers, and finally hunting up their ancestry in medieval manuscripts.
Henderson, William. Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders. W. Satchell, Peyton, & Co., 1879. Internet Archive.
Leyden, John. “Lord Soulis.” Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. 2, edited by Walter Scott, James Ballantyne, 1803, pp. 353-388. Google Books.
Leland, Charles Godfrey. “Etrusco-Roman Remains in Modern Tuscan Tradition.” Congrès International des Traditions Populaires, Première Session, Paris 1889, Société d’Èditions Scientifiques, 1891. Google Books.
Gervase of Tilbury. Otia imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor. Edited and translated by S.E. Banks and J.W. Binns. Clarendon Press, 2002.
Thomas of Walsingham. Historia Anglicana. Edited by Henry Thomas Riley, vol. 1, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863. Google Books.
Croker, Thomas Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. 2nd ed., John Murray, 1838. Google Books.
Hutton, Ronald. “The Making of the Early Modern British Fairy Tradition.” The Historical Journal, vol. 57, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1135-1156. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24531978
Sinclair, John. The Statistical Account of Scotland. Vol. 16, William Creech, 1791. Google Books.
Teverson, Andrew. 2025. “William Henderson: ‘A Folk-Lore Student before Folk-Lore Came into Vogue.'” Folklore, vol. 136, no. 3, pp. 447–65. Taylor and Francis.
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