Speculative fraud hypothesis

[dexdex]

This is close to a hypothesis from a reputable expert on ancient herbals: Sergio Toresella, described in this publication: Toresella, Sergio: Gli erbari degli alchmisti, in: L. Saginati, Arte farmaceutica e piante medicinali; erbari, vasi, strumenti e testi dalle raccolte liguri, 1995.

I've found summaries of this publication, and while the hypothesis has things in common (and the idea of quacks using such herbals has precedent!), the implications do not appear to be elaborated on - it's simply a passing mention. I think it could be interesting to hypothesise what such a process of creation would mean, and see if the Voynich manuscript fits these criteria. To wit, some ideas: 

• The creation method has to be simple, just enough to fool the type of mark the conman/conmen would be aiming at. It can't be super elaborate - but a word generation algorithm and facsimiling existing examples of herbals would fit. This fits the word structure of the VMS, and could imprint some potential signs in the larger semantic units of the manuscript. However, I can't see any conman going any further than this simple process - anything more elaborate basically falsifies the hypothesis.
  
• It is likely to be prepared in chunks, and some chunks should have seen more use. This could be checked for in the signs of the usage, as well as the textual differences between sections. The 'standard' wear by later owners (flipping the first page etc) would mask some of this, but it could still be in principle detectable. Some of those signs of use would be atypical for a meaningful herbal - you'd expect a lot more "accidents" with dirt and liquids if someone travelled with it.
  
• Corrections in content are unnecessary for a conman, so all examples of retouching by the original author(s) have to be in service of making a more convincing fake - so retouching a faint bit of script could work, but changing entire words wouldn't. As far as I'm aware, this is completely congruent with how the manuscript looks superficially, but more explicit statements and study of the instances of retouching could be done.
  

So, it seems worth a deeper think about the implications of such a motive for the manuscript's creation.

Rene, you mentioned there are difficulties with this hypothesis. I'm curious, can you think of other ones in addition to the ones I mentioned?

Another thought: The foldables are quite unusual for a non-fraudulent codex from what I gather (though I am not an expert) - why wouldn't you just make smaller images that fit in folios? But, they would be extremely useful in a prop. "Look at these huge drawings!!"