Anglo - Saxon Medicine : Cures or Catastrophe ?

T historians and laypeople alike often look upon medicine from the Anglo-Saxon period (550-1066 A.D.) with horror and derision. One seems to conjure up images of dirty rags used to clean wounds, or ground-up dung ingested to cure a headache. When one examines the actual medical remedies of the time, however, useful cures can be found. The remedies in Anglo-Saxon medical texts are extremely interesting, not merely because they give insight into the medical practices of the time, but also because they are products of a culture on the cusp of transition. The remedies demonstrate the integration of the Anglo-Saxons’ pagan beliefs with those of Christianity, and so they are valuable indications of the changes permeating Britain’s society during the Anglo-Saxon period. This paper shall discuss two such remedies, one from the Lacnunga (10th or 11th century) and the other from Bald’s Leechbook (probably 9th century),. Both texts are medical manuscripts containing various cures for Anglo-Saxon ailments which were most likely copied down by Christian scribes in Anglo-Saxon monasteries. The two remedies discussed in this paper demonstrate that Christians in Anglo-Saxon England used medicine as a means to promote the spread of their religion into areas that had held onto their Germanic or pagan backgrounds by integrating Christian themes into the native folkloric and medical practice. The cures also convey that Anglo-Saxons had a decent understanding of medicine for topical or external ailments, while their knowledge of remedies for internal symptoms was a bit lacking. The first remedy to be discussed in this paper is a cure for what the Lacnunga calls a ‘flying venom’: