Sources and Resources John Bradmore and the Case of the Bitten Man: A Tantalising Link Between Three Medieval Surgical Manuscripts

Abstract

Summary This article examines three English surgical treatises compiled between the late fourteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. The earliest, a Middle English treatise dated 1392, appears to have been compiled by a surgeon practising in London (MS Wellcome 564). Near contemporary with this is a Latin treatise, Philomena, compiled by London surgeon John Bradmore in the first decade of the fifteenth century (BL MS Sloane 2272). The latest of the three, dated 1446, represents a translation/adaptation of Bradmore’s Philomena into Middle English (BL MS Harley 1736). All three treatises contain anecdotes of surgical cases, and just one of these anecdotes is common to all three manuscripts. Close analysis of this story is used to explore aspects of the practice and regulation of surgery in late medieval London, and also to examine the relationship of the three treatises and the implications this has for the sharing of texts and information among surgeons.