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The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - Printable Version

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RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - VViews - 13-10-2016

(06-10-2016, 07:24 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.soap comes in a bottle for me

This made me think...
I found the following quote in Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by Robert E. Krebs:
P. 229
"By the 12th century the use of Castile soap, cut into small blocks, was widespread while much of the earlier soaps, rather than being hard, ended up more like modern liquid soap."

Officially liquid soap is a much more recent invention (19th century I believe), but this quote does make me wonder if, depending on the age of the actual content of the Voynich Manuscript, some of the containers could be soap bottles, or containers for mixing up/storing special/scented soaps. Perhaps incorporating a basic hard soap with extra plants for added benefits?

ETA: Soap is also an ingredient in DIY plant pesticides. One book I'm going to have to check for more details at the library is "Crop Protection in Medieval Agriculture: Studies in pre-modern organic agriculture" by Jan C Zadoks

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - VViews - 13-10-2016

Ok so it turns out the whole of Zadoks' book is available You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
It contains a wealth of insecticides and other plant treatments, a lot of them based on Geoponika, a 10thC encyclopedia in 20 volumes on agriculture.
The use of soap is documented there as being effective against caterpillars in particular.
The pharma section also contains the depiction of a frog on a nearby folio, and frogs eat insects...
I'm getting OT here, but perhaps it might be worth investigating the items in the pharma section as a collection of things that can be used to treat plants for various problems, and comparing that with the remedies listed in works such as Geoponika?

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - MarcoP - 13-10-2016

(13-10-2016, 01:16 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.ETA: Soap is also an ingredient in DIY plant pesticides. One book I'm going to have to check for more details at the library is "Crop Protection in Medieval Agriculture: Studies in pre-modern organic agriculture" by Jan C Zadoks

Hi VViews,
I agree that agricultural recipes are worth investigating.

Soap was also used in medical and cosmetic recipes. I attach two examples:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - a medical recipe for curing fistula

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (lady's secrets) - a cosmetic recipe to lighten hair

And of course the cube could be something different from soap. So the range of possibilities is quite wide. But analyzing "pharma" paragraphs taking into account all the elements (images and labels) sounds like an excellent idea to me.

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - R. Sale - 13-10-2016

And what about the use of lapis lazuli as an ingredient? How many examples of that??

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - MarcoP - 13-10-2016

(13-10-2016, 05:48 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And what about the use of lapis lazuli as an ingredient? How many examples of that??

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has also recipes with lapis lazuli.
This one is for quartan fever and includes a number of plants as well (gentiana, centaurea, absinthium, peony...).

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - MarcoP - 14-10-2016

(13-10-2016, 06:12 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(13-10-2016, 05:48 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And what about the use of lapis lazuli as an ingredient? How many examples of that??

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has also recipes with lapis lazuli.
This one is for quartan fever and includes a number of plants as well (gentiana, centaurea, absinthium, peony...).

I could not understand "sene" in Viallnova's recipe, so I searched other examples.
This is a recipe to purge melancholy, from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Purgantia melancoliam.
Sene., lapis lazuli, fenic., epithi., nigella,
Emblicus, elloborus, melanch. deducit et indi.

From this, "sene" seems to be the abbreviation of a plant name, I guess You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - Helmut Winkler - 14-10-2016

Marco,
I think it is senna (alexandrina), laxativum!

RE: The blue cube in f102v2 - -JKP- - 21-10-2016

In the middle ages (and earlier, dating back to Pliny and probably earlier), they believed that if you properly distilled antimony sulphide (see pic) you could get a red liquid that was supposedly good medicine (as it turns out modern chemists suspect it was the iron impurities in the ore that contributed to the red color and pure antimony didn't work, which is why medieval alchemical experiments had mixed results and the evasive "red elixir" was hard to create).

It was also ground into powder for use as a dark-colored cosmetic.

[Image: Antimony_massive.jpg]

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - DarrenW - 31-10-2016

This discussion about soap, minerals and the recent posts suggesting similarities between the VM Zodiac section and Lapidary texts (texts about minerals and gemstones) lead me to wonder if this object might be soapstone.

Curiously, the alchemical symbol for soapstone looks like an empty T-O map. Perhaps the diagram at the centre of the VMS f86v3 could be a reference or "visual metaphor" for soapstone, rather than an unfinished T-O map?

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Prof. Rampling writing in an essay found in the new Yale Voynich book suggests that the balneological section is not alchemical but features a kind of visual metaphor that could be paralleled by alchemical illustrations. I wonder if this "visual metaphor" could extend to the script itself (and to other parts of the VMS)?

There are a number of similarities between the VMS script and alchemical symbols, for example. I've included a table excerpted from M.E. D'Imperio's The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma (p.120). The source of this appears to be "Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie, Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters" by G.W.Gessmann, 1922.

The most notable similarities being the EVA:k and EVA:t symbols meaning "to prepare" and "urine" respectively. (The symbol for "month" also looks like the symbol found on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)

[Image: eb061a0b1729b5b44fc8dfe2305b0e68.jpg]

RE: The yellow/blue cube in f102v2 - Diane - 01-11-2016

Marco,
(re your earlier comment on Touwaide..)

I think that here you may have expressed well the standard opinon about this detail, going back perhaps two decades.

The differences are mainly about the nature of the ingredients and final preparations.  You agree with me, I see, in emphasising the importance of connecting the block to the detail below it, and here again I doubt if either of us was the first to do that.

Basically, Touwaide has re-stated everyone's opinon in general, over the past couple of decades, but he has intelligently avoided assumptions about the intended purpose of either the botanical images or this section.

Since the vessels are not albarelli, or any sort of pharmacy jar known to have been used in medieval European pharmacies, I think he was wise to avoid that assumption.  But Touwaide is agreeing with the views expressed by earlier researchers (though not all of them), rather than creating a new evaluation of these sections.  To suggest otherwise would be a mistake.  It is certainly gratifying to have an eminent scholar agree with the opinions expressed earlier, but one wouldn't like to see a false impression given that no similar evaluation had been provided earlier.