A mysterious medical manuscript was said to have come from the legendary island of Hy-Brasil—but its history tells an equally remarkable story. Karin Murray-Bergquist traces the text’s journey from medieval Baghdad to Ireland, revealing how medical scholarship became an enchanted family treasure.
By Karin Murray-Bergquist
The 1846 version of the tale, recorded by James Hardiman, gave shape to this new gift, and Morogh O’Lee became a man who possessed a strange treasure. It was a manuscript containing Irish and Latin text, which detailed cures and medical treatments in red and black ink, in neat, though curiously arranged, tables. This was said to be a relic of Hy-Brasil, and its strange appearance was proof enough of its enchanted origin.
Several distinct parts of this story were true. The book was certainly unusual in appearance, and the O’Lees had been physicians to the O’Flaherty family for generations. But the story behind the manuscript is perhaps one of which those who recorded the tale were unaware, and it is just as fascinating as a voyage to Hy-Brasil. According to research conducted by Dr. Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, the volume has a background more scientific than mystical.
From Baghdad to Sicily: A Medical Text on the Move
16th-century copy of Ibn Jazlah’s Takwīm al-abdān fī tadbīr al-insān – Historical Medical Library: Cushing Arabic Ms. 11.
The book’s origins are medieval, and its journey began in eleventh-century Baghdad under the title Takwīm al-abdān fī tadbīr al-insān (The Almanac of Bodily Parts for the Treatment of People). The physician Ibn Jazlah, a Muslim convert who wrote on medicine in the latter part of the century, was its author. His other major medical work was a collection of information on food, drugs, and the preparation of ingredients for medicinal purposes, interspersed with recipes. Both volumes were dedicated to the court of Caliph al-Muqtadī. It was Takwīm al-abdān, however, that would travel.
This intrepid manuscript made its way to Sicily, where it was translated into Latin by the prominent Jewish-Sicilian physician Faraj ben Salim in the late thirteenth century, becoming Tacuini ægritudinum. Faraj ben Salim had a long career as a translator of medical texts, having also translated a manuscript attributed to Galen, De Medicinis Expertis, and al-Razi’s medical encyclopedia, which he titled Continens. As a physician and medical translator working for Charles of Anjou, he is pictured with the king on the cover of the latter manuscript.
The cures described are organized into 44 square tables, each divided into twelve columns, giving the volume a distinctive appearance. Arranged by the diseases treated and cured, the compartments contain a combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal writing, making them challenging for the unfamiliar eye to decipher. This format imitates astronomical charts, making the volume one of the first tabulated medical manuals to be composed and arranged in this way. It was intended to make the physician’s task simpler by presenting information in a clear and concise manner that could be used to find answers rapidly as well as to teach medicine.
Into Irish Hands: The O’Lee Family’s Manuscript
Brasil as shown in relation to Ireland on a map by Abraham Ortelius (1572)
The version in the O’Lee family’s possession was a fifteenth-century manuscript, judging by the year 1434 written on one of the pages. The Latin version produced by ben Salim was translated into German and printed in 1532, but evidently, the text was already in wide circulation in manuscript form. The names of the translators and scribes involved in compiling the Irish translation are unknown. How it passed into the hands of Morogh O’Lee is also uncertain, though it was likely connected to his family’s status as physicians.
However, nineteenth-century historian Eugene O’Curry writes that O’Lee likely invented the story of the mystical book to advance his own interests, and that claiming the manuscript was of an otherworldly nature was the surest way to gain greater prominence.
In subsequent centuries, the book passed from the family’s possession onto the bookshelves of the Royal Irish Academy, where its origins were traced.
Seven Years Unopened: How Scholarship Became Legend
Two accounts of the book’s acquisition include the detail that O’Lee was forbidden to open it for seven years—an instruction that he obeyed, which also added to the mystery surrounding the book. Perhaps, in truth, he had not opened it for seven years for the more mundane reason that he did not think it would be helpful to him.
As with other artifacts—for instance, the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan Castle in Scotland—the real-world origins of notable heirlooms could be blurred and replaced in the public eye with a more mystical story. However, the travels of this medieval medical treatise are as remarkable as anyone could hope for.
Karin Murray-Bergquist is a graduate student at the University of Iceland, Viking and Medieval Norse Studies. Follow her on Instagram @galloussophisticate
A mysterious medical manuscript was said to have come from the legendary island of Hy-Brasil—but its history tells an equally remarkable story. Karin Murray-Bergquist traces the text’s journey from medieval Baghdad to Ireland, revealing how medical scholarship became an enchanted family treasure.
By Karin Murray-Bergquist
The 1846 version of the tale, recorded by James Hardiman, gave shape to this new gift, and Morogh O’Lee became a man who possessed a strange treasure. It was a manuscript containing Irish and Latin text, which detailed cures and medical treatments in red and black ink, in neat, though curiously arranged, tables. This was said to be a relic of Hy-Brasil, and its strange appearance was proof enough of its enchanted origin.
Several distinct parts of this story were true. The book was certainly unusual in appearance, and the O’Lees had been physicians to the O’Flaherty family for generations. But the story behind the manuscript is perhaps one of which those who recorded the tale were unaware, and it is just as fascinating as a voyage to Hy-Brasil. According to research conducted by Dr. Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, the volume has a background more scientific than mystical.
From Baghdad to Sicily: A Medical Text on the Move
The book’s origins are medieval, and its journey began in eleventh-century Baghdad under the title Takwīm al-abdān fī tadbīr al-insān (The Almanac of Bodily Parts for the Treatment of People). The physician Ibn Jazlah, a Muslim convert who wrote on medicine in the latter part of the century, was its author. His other major medical work was a collection of information on food, drugs, and the preparation of ingredients for medicinal purposes, interspersed with recipes. Both volumes were dedicated to the court of Caliph al-Muqtadī. It was Takwīm al-abdān, however, that would travel.
This intrepid manuscript made its way to Sicily, where it was translated into Latin by the prominent Jewish-Sicilian physician Faraj ben Salim in the late thirteenth century, becoming Tacuini ægritudinum. Faraj ben Salim had a long career as a translator of medical texts, having also translated a manuscript attributed to Galen, De Medicinis Expertis, and al-Razi’s medical encyclopedia, which he titled Continens. As a physician and medical translator working for Charles of Anjou, he is pictured with the king on the cover of the latter manuscript.
Medicine in Squares: The Book’s Unusual Design
The cures described are organized into 44 square tables, each divided into twelve columns, giving the volume a distinctive appearance. Arranged by the diseases treated and cured, the compartments contain a combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal writing, making them challenging for the unfamiliar eye to decipher. This format imitates astronomical charts, making the volume one of the first tabulated medical manuals to be composed and arranged in this way. It was intended to make the physician’s task simpler by presenting information in a clear and concise manner that could be used to find answers rapidly as well as to teach medicine.
Into Irish Hands: The O’Lee Family’s Manuscript
The version in the O’Lee family’s possession was a fifteenth-century manuscript, judging by the year 1434 written on one of the pages. The Latin version produced by ben Salim was translated into German and printed in 1532, but evidently, the text was already in wide circulation in manuscript form. The names of the translators and scribes involved in compiling the Irish translation are unknown. How it passed into the hands of Morogh O’Lee is also uncertain, though it was likely connected to his family’s status as physicians.
However, nineteenth-century historian Eugene O’Curry writes that O’Lee likely invented the story of the mystical book to advance his own interests, and that claiming the manuscript was of an otherworldly nature was the surest way to gain greater prominence.
In subsequent centuries, the book passed from the family’s possession onto the bookshelves of the Royal Irish Academy, where its origins were traced.
Seven Years Unopened: How Scholarship Became Legend
Two accounts of the book’s acquisition include the detail that O’Lee was forbidden to open it for seven years—an instruction that he obeyed, which also added to the mystery surrounding the book. Perhaps, in truth, he had not opened it for seven years for the more mundane reason that he did not think it would be helpful to him.
As with other artifacts—for instance, the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan Castle in Scotland—the real-world origins of notable heirlooms could be blurred and replaced in the public eye with a more mystical story. However, the travels of this medieval medical treatise are as remarkable as anyone could hope for.
Karin Murray-Bergquist is a graduate student at the University of Iceland, Viking and Medieval Norse Studies. Follow her on Instagram @galloussophisticate
Click here to view the manuscript
Top Image: A page from the fifteenth-century Book of the O’Lees, or Book of Hy-Brasil, showing its distinctive tabulated arrangement of medical information. RIA MS 23 P 10 (ii), p. 62. © Royal Irish Academy; image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.
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