Henry E. Handerson's study of Gilbertus Anglicus opens not with a biography of the medieval physician but with an explanatory foreword detailing the manuscript's circuitous path to publication. The author, a physician himself, died before seeing his work in print, and the Cleveland Medical Library Association issued it posthumously in 1918. This framing immediately establishes the book as a scholarly artifact, shaped by the same careful attention to detail that Handerson brought to his subject.

The core of the work is a close reading of Gilbert's medical text, focusing on his treatments for gout and leprosy. Handerson quotes Gilbert directly, revealing a practitioner who alternates between confident, even aggressive, interventions—such as withdrawing half a pound of blood from the saphena vein—and a deferential cataloging of authorities. This tension between personal experience and received tradition runs through the excerpts, offering a window into 13th-century medical practice.

Venesection and the Body's Humors

Handerson devotes considerable attention to Gilbert's use of venesection, presenting it as a primary therapeutic tool. In one case, Gilbert describes bleeding a patient three times in a single day, withdrawing half a pound of blood from the saphena vein, after which the patient slept for the first time in many nights. This dramatic intervention is followed by a light, cool diet, and the patient is declared free of trouble in her hand by the third day. Gilbert presents this as a personal success, even claiming originality for his approach.

Yet the next chapter, titled "The treatment of gout according to the authorities (secundum magistros)," shifts tone. Here Gilbert defers to the opinions of modern teachers, laying down general rules: the body must be purified by venesection if the material is sanguineous, or by purgation otherwise. He warns against fomentations in rheumatic cases and insists on gradual elimination of peccant material. The stomach must be protected, lest weakened organs cause humors to flow to the joints. This juxtaposition—between a physician's bold claim and his subsequent retreat to consensus—suggests a profession negotiating individual experience with collective authority.

Formulas, Names, and the Weight of Authority

Gilbert's discussion of gout includes some twenty pages of special formulae, each bearing a title that invokes a famous name: Pilulae artheticae Salernitorum, Cathapcie Alexandrine, Oxymel Juliani, Pilulae Arabice, Pulvis Petrocelli, Oleum benedictum, Pilulae Johannicii. Handerson notes that this practice resembles modern proprietary names like "Dover's Powder" or "Tully's Powder," suggesting a continuity in the marketing of medical remedies. The active ingredient in many of these formulas is hermodactyl, which Handerson identifies as likely colchicum autumnale, the same plant used in modern gout treatments.

This section reveals a tension between innovation and tradition. Gilbert is not merely repeating ancient recipes; he is organizing them under authoritative names, perhaps to lend credibility to his own compilation. The detailed listing of ingredients and indications shows a systematic approach to pharmacopoeia, even as the underlying humoral theory remains unchallenged. Handerson's commentary, though restrained, highlights how medieval medicine combined empirical observation with a reverence for named authorities.

Empirical Remedies and the Limits of Learned Medicine

The chapter titled Emperica offers the most striking example of tension in Gilbert's work. He begins by apologizing for including empirical remedies, acknowledging that he may "demean himself somewhat" by doing so. Yet he includes them anyway, quoting the words of Torror, Funcius, and another philosopher. The remedies are bizarre by modern standards: binding the right foot of a green frog to the patient's right foot for three days; binding a magnet to the foot; or using the heel-bone of an ass, again with careful attention to right and left sides.

Gilbert's reluctance is palpable. He frames these remedies as something the "ancients (antiqui)" have said, and he writes them in a new book only so that the work may not be lacking. This gesture reveals a deep ambivalence: the learned physician must acknowledge folk practices, even as he distances himself from them. Handerson does not comment on the efficacy of these treatments, but the inclusion itself speaks to the porous boundary between scholastic medicine and popular healing in the 13th century.

Handerson's study is valuable not for its conclusions—which are necessarily limited by the excerpts—but for the questions it raises about how medieval physicians constructed authority. Gilbert's text oscillates between personal case reports and compilations of named formulas, between confident intervention and deferential citation. Readers interested in the history of medicine will find here a concrete example of how theory and practice interacted in a period often dismissed as static. The book rewards close attention to these tensions, which are as revealing as any remedy Gilbert prescribed.