No text, but a visual code

[-JKP-]

Rx is a very common Latin abbreviation. It frequently stands for recipe, root, or king, which means it also shows up in books about pharmacy and medicine (and politics). It's still used today for the prescription sheets the doctor gives a patient to get medicine from the pharmacist.

Actually, since Rx stands for "root" in the abstract as well as the literal sense, it may show up in almost any context, but it's common in books of medicine and astronomy.


So, it makes you wonder, in a manuscript with more than 100 plant folios and less than 20 cosmological folios, which is more likely? pages and pages of astronomical coordinates that would be difficult to use because they are not lined up in charts, or a compendium of apothecarial information or medicinal recipes related to plants?

I'm not saying it's either one, or it might be both, I'm just trying to look at it from a practical point of view. If they are astronomical coordinates, they would have to be completely rewritten in chart form. The same with moon tables, calendars, or Easter calculations. It's very difficult to use them if they are written out like narrative text. By the way, I have looked for narrative style versions of these kinds of information, and they do exist, but usually the information is organized into charts.