VMs: Re: Botany -- (f100r) Mandrake

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dana,

>     A while back you asked whether or not there was any evidence of 
> mandrake in the VMS. In my initial scan of the drawings I did not see 
> evidence of this plant; however, recently I was reading 'Botany And The 
> Voynich "Roger Bacon" Manuscript Once More' by Robert S.  Brumbaugh 
> (Speculum 49, p.548) in which he stated that a colleague of his, 
> Professor Louis Martz, identified one of the smaller plants in f100 (row 
> 2, 6 across on the right) as being a drawing of the mandrake plant. I 
> agree that it does appear to be an accurate match.

This is great, thanks! :-)

IMO, matching up real herbals to the visual recipes in the pharma section 
is perhaps the next big challenge - the (almost certainly) composite nature 
of many of the VMS herbals is frustrating and likely to throw you off the 
scent.

There has been a lot of discussion on this on-list in previous years, so 
well worth checking through the list archives carefully. If only we had an 
index or concordance of the archives etc... :-)

BTW, once I've read the medium-sized pile of Italian books and articles to 
read that I've accumulated (I just wish I could read Italian any faster), 
I'll be clean out of VMS research leads. I don't know it that's a good 
thing or a bad thing...

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