Explore the Curious Cures from medieval medicine in Cambridge University Library exhibition

The study of medicine and the theories behind sometimes terrifying treatments of the medieval era are laid bare in an exhibition of ancient manuscripts – many on display for the first time.

Curious Cures: Medicine in the Medieval World, which opened at Cambridge University Library on 29 March, explores health and disease in the medieval world and how our ancestors sought to cure everything from infertility to constipation

It will transport visitors back to a time when unspeakable ingredients and questionable remedies rubbed shoulders with often complex theories about how the human body functioned.

Drawn from the world-class collections of the University Library and Cambridge’s colleges, there are elaborately written manuscripts, pocket-sized recipe books and medics’ case notes.

Alongside these are rotating astronomical instruments, surgical diagrams, and some of the earliest anatomical images in western Europe. One striking manuscript contains illustrations of ‘Vein Man’ and ‘Zodiac Man’, illuminating how medicine and astrology were entwined in medieval times.

Dr James Freeman, the exhibition’s curator and medieval manuscripts specialist, says: “Medicine in the medieval period wasn’t simply superstition or blind trial and error – it was guided by elaborate and sophisticated ideas about the body and the influence upon it of the wider world and even the cosmos.

“The wide variety of manuscripts in Curious Cures also shows us that medicine wasn’t practised just by university-educated physicians, but by monks and friars, by surgeons and their apprentices, by apothecaries and herbalists, by midwives, and by women and men in their own homes.”

A cure for lice… and more

The exhibition does not shy away from highlighting the gruesome ailments or horrifying treatments. There is an English surgeon’s illustrated guide to operating on anal fistulas, a cure for lice using mercury mixed with apple sauce, and instructions on how to restore a person’s health by blood letting. Many of the manuscripts contain charms and rituals alongside herbal remedies, and even university-educated physicians showed an interest in incorporating magic into their medical practice.

“The exhibition shines a light on the medieval world, examining how medical practitioners sought to understand and treat illness,” says Dr Freeman. “The remedies in these manuscripts take you to the medieval bedside and reveal the strange and surprising things that physicians and healers tried to make their patients well again. We’ve translated many of the recipes on display.”

He adds that our ancestors also read books or sought advice on a balanced diet, a good night’s sleep, exercise and fresh air.

Royal remedies

One of the most beautiful manuscripts belonged to Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII. The richly-illuminated book contains a copy of the Régime du corps, a guide to healthy living composed 200 years earlier for a French noblewoman. It was written in French, the language of royalty and aristocracy, and spread quickly across western Europe.

It contains chapters dedicated to women’s health, in particular courtship and sex, fertility and pregnancy, childbirth and caring for newborns. This reflects not only the perils women faced as prospective mothers but the preoccupation of producing an heir to ensuring the survival of their line.

Dr Freeman explains: “Such a detailed health regime was out of reach for all but the most wealthy. However, the medical recipes added later at the back of the book use the same spices and common herbs found in more common recipe books. There is even a recipe for a laxative powder, which makes you wonder about Elizabeth and Henrys diet!”

Other handwritten volumes on display include remedies for headache, toothache, constipation or diarrhoea, sore joints, itchy skin and coughs.

Testimony in one 15th-century manuscript records how a friar at Stamford was cured of his nosebleeds by dipping his testicles into cold water and vinegar. Another records the apparently successful treatment of a man in Cambridge in 1474, after a year of severe gonorrhoeal discharge. The creator of this latter cure, John Argentine, had studied at King’s College in Cambridge and was physician to Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII and his son Prince Arthur.

Cure for infertility

One 15th-century manuscript compiled by a Carmelite friar and contained nearly 200 with an unusual cure for infertility (translated from Latin): “A true medicine, and often proven, so that a woman may conceive however sterile she may be. Take three or four weasel testicles and half a handful of young mouse-ear [a plant] and burn it all equally in an earthenware pot. Afterwards, grind and combine with the juice of the aforementioned herb, and thus make soft pills in the manner of a hazelnut kernel, and place them so deeply in the private parts that they touch the uterus, and leave there for three days, during which she should abstain entirely from sex. After these three days however, she should have intercourse with a man and she should conceive without delay.”

Getting ready for the afterlife

Curious Cures touches on how people confronted their own mortality and a highlight is an early printed edition of the Ars moriendi – The art of dying – which tells its reader how to prepare for the end of their lives by repenting their sins. It opens with a scene of a man on his deathbed, surrounded by friends and family, and attended by his priest and his physician.

Dr Freeman says: “The physician holds aloft a flask containing the man’s urine, which he is examining in order to offer a prognosis so the patient could make a last confession and receive the last rites, so his soul would be ready for the afterlife.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a display of images of human anatomy from manuscripts in collections in Cambridge and across Europe.

“For the medieval and modern viewer alike, they show a body we both inhabit and imagine,” says Dr Freeman. “They prompt us to think about what we know of our own internal workings, what ideas or concerns about our bodies we carry with us, and how we confront the human experience of health, disease and death.”

The last image in this series is a rubbing taken from a memorial brass in a parish church in Oxfordshire. It shows a skeleton, riddled with worms and wrapped in its burial shroud: a stark reminder of the body’s decay and the urgency of salvation.

“This haunting image was meant to shock medieval viewers, reminding them to live virtuously, confess their sins, and prepare for what truly matters: the fate of their soul. The exhibition is not just about how medieval people healed, but how they faced the inevitable — and the ideas and practices, the beliefs and rituals that shaped their lives as well as their final moments.”

Curious Cures runs until 6 December. Pre-booking is essential.