Re: VMs: Random Questions/Observations

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ken,

At 21:37 28/07/2003 -0500, Ken W wrote:
> First timer Sebastian inspired me to write.  All of us have our fields of 
> expertise; mine are astronomy and history of medieval technology... that's 
> why I design furniture.  It's an odd world.

I suppose there'll always be a market for comfy astronomers' chairs... :-)

> 1.  Is there any significance to the ambiguous spacing after <r> and <s> 
> characters in the text?

Possibly - FWIW, the way I read the text <r> is almost always part of 
<or>/<ar> and <s> is almost always a free-standing character.

> 2.  Is it of any significance to the fact that the <l> character shows up 
> within the drawings of f65v (the branch) and f73r (the tail)?

I take the former to mean that many of the herbal images are 
non-representational (like the Novara "heraldic eagle" page), but in a 
peculiar metaphoric way we don't currently understand.

> 3.  Why is "Scorpio's" depicted as a dog-like creature and "cancer" as 
> crayfish-esc animals (two, at that)?  I'm looking into the 
> historical/cultural roots of this myself.

IIRC, the general consensus on Scorpio was that it probably represents a 
*basilisk* - the list archives from 2000_Sep & 2001_Feb have some posts on 
this subject.

> 4.  Has anyone codified the root and leaf appearances from the first 
> section vs. those in the "medicinal" section?

People have tried, but without great success to date (IIRC). Part of the 
problem may be the lack of available colour reproductions of the herbals - 
but most of the problem may simply be down to the lack of certainty of 
identification of the herbal pictures themselves.

I once tried to find any late medieval recipes with frogs or toads in, as 
one of the recipes in the pharma section appears to have one (it's on the 
penultimate pharma folio), but also without success. :-(

> 5.  Has anyone attempted to read the Schmidl biography of Jacobus Horcicky 
> who can give some details thereof? Is it available anywhere in print?

Sorry, I can't help with this one. :-(

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


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