Dr Claire Burridge

My current project, ‘Crossroads: The Evolution of Early Medieval Medicine in Global and Local Contexts’, takes a new approach to the evolution of medical knowledge in the early middle ages, applying recently developed digital tools to collections of medical recipes unattributed to classical texts – material largely overlooked by existing scholarship. The project's website can be viewed here. By transcribing and analysing surviving remedies from manuscripts today found in collections across Europe (c. 10,000-15,000 recipes expected), this research explores previously unknown, non-classical influences on medicine and investigates how, why, where, and by whom these texts were adapted. The project thus provides a much-needed counterpoint to the traditional focus on the inheritance and reception of classical medical knowledge in the early medieval west, contextualising the evolution of European medicine within both global and local frameworks.

Alongside this work, my first book (under contract with Brill) builds on research stemming from my recently completed, Wellcome Trust-funded PhD, ‘An Interdisciplinary Investigation into Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice’. My dissertation posed the question: could those individuals in possession of the recorded medical knowledge have attempted to treat the ailments from which people suffered? To answer this question, I integrate textual and osteological evidence, assessing the potential practicality and applicability of the medical knowledge circulating in eighth- and ninth-century western Europe. This interdisciplinary approach casts fresh light on early medieval health and medicine, expanding on existing scholarship by analysing largely overlooked texts while simultaneously breaking new ground by re-evaluating the written record in the light of osteological evidence.

I am also leading up an international manuscript cataloguing project, Beyond Beccaria, that aims to update and make accessible catalogue entries for all surviving early medieval Latin medical texts. The existing catalogues of manuscripts containing medical writings, Augusto Beccaria’s I Codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (1956) and Ernest Wickersheimer’s Les manuscrits latins de médecine du haut moyen age dans les bibliothèques de France (1966), while indispensable to researchers, are desperately in need of revision and expansion. Additionally, the limited number of copies of these texts has created challenges in accessing the information they contain. The Beyond Beccaria team is working to remedy these issues by producing an accessible, ‘living’ catalogue (i.e., a catalogue that is online and updateable) – stay tuned for the release of our digital platform.