Re: Catherine Sforza - the author of the VMS?!?!?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Here's Patrizia Catellani's page (a Pharmacy Historian connected to the 
University of Pavia), describing Catherine Sforza's life, alchemy & herbals:-

	http://chifar.unipv.it/museo/Catellani/catSforza/CaterinaSf.htm

This describes how, in 1525, Count Antonio Cuppano da Montefalco made a 
copy of the manuscript, and this is what is still in existence today. It 
contains 454 recipes, of which 358 are medicines, 30 chemistry (alchemy?) 
and 66 cosmetics.

By comparison, the VMS has 20 pharma paragrpahs, plus 323 starred 
paragraphs in the last section, of which folios 109 and 110 are missing. If 
a folio has (say) 15 stars to a side, and we're missing 4 sides, that's 
roughly a further 60 recipes: so 20 + 323 + 60 = 403, which is of the same 
order of magnitude (given that there are probably further recipes within 
the rest of the text).

The transcribed text of some of the recipes (from the same site):-

	http://chifar.unipv.it/museo/Catellani/catSforza/Ric_CatSf.htm

At this point in time, I'm seeing only similarities... :-))))

Another Italian page (from a different site entirely):-

	http://www.dolomiti.it/ita/salute/bellezza/sforza.htm

Any VMS matches for borrago officinalis, anyone?

English:	http://www.dolomiti.it/eng/salute/bellezza/b2.htm
Italian:		http://www.dolomiti.it/ita/salute/bellezza/b2.htm

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....