Parnell, William

  • Parnell, William
Date:
c. 1685
Reference:
MS.3771
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Credit

Parnell, William. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

About this work

Description

Collection of medical receipts: in English.

The receipts are ranged in alphabetical order of diseases, and are numbered separately within each letter.

The compiler's name appears to be given on p. 218, where there is the following heading to a list of herbs: 'A briefe Collection of those herbs and plants that purge the head and braine practised by me this sixty yeares. D. Parnell'. Reference to a practice of sixty years is repeated in the last section of the same page. Again on p. 135 'Doctor Parnell' is written in the margin of 'Medicines for the Angina struma or King's evill and all glandulous and hard swellings in the neck, throate or elsewhere, being all well approved in my practice this 60 yeares'. Lastly 'D. Parnell' is similarly found in the margin against a receipt for 'A purgation I gave [against melancholy] which wrought a good effect'.

In view of Parnell's probably advanced age, it seems unlikely that he was the writer of this MS., but the scribe was possibly the 'E.W.' whose initials are found on the verso of the last leaf.

Publication/Creation

c. 1685

Physical description

1 volume 218 pp. + 10 ll. folio. 29 × 191/2 cm. Original rough calf binding: with gilt-stamped 'H.W.' on the sides. Outer upper corner of the last leaf torn away. A title-page or preliminary leaf is probably wanting.

Contributors

Acquisition note

Purchased 1925.

Biographical note

In their Medical Practitioners in the Diocese of London, 1955 Bloom and James give an entry on p. 21 for a 'William Parnell of Endfield, Middlesex', who was licensed to practise medicine in 1622. This is possibly the suggested compiler of this MS., which could have been written c. 1685, a date which appears to be consonant with the script, which is certainly of the last quarter of the 17th century.

Finding aids

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).

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Identifiers

Accession number

  • 58436