Voynich Manuscript as a charlatan's prop

[Rafal]

I would add a few more thoughts about the wandering charlatan scenario

1)
The texts on the last page may suggest he was of German origin. However month names under Zodiac pictures are in something like French, Occitan or something like that. I would suggest that he could lose his book somewhere in France and it was its new owner that added the month names.
Maybe the charlatan found some buyer for it there?
Or maybe he had to escape from an angry mob when someone recognized him and left all his belongings at his marketplace booth?

2)
Making a fake women health manual could be very intentional. I hope I won't offend anyone here by it but there are both stereotypes and some real results showing that women are easier to trick or manipulate by someone with bad intentions (see for example: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ). Women are also more into natural or unconventional therapy thing. Probably many of potential female clients of our supposed charlatan would never ask him what do all these diagrams really mean and just by brief look would decide it must be something very wise and scientific.
Also some historic charlatans like Rasputin had mostly female followers:


3)
Of course if someone asked the charlatan what does these language and pictures mean anyway, then he had ready answers for that. Some obvious one is that he cannot reveal these secrets because some old monk/sage/shaman trusted them to him and he made him a promise not to talk about it to anyone. Or that it is some Babylonian, Arabic or Indian knowledge. He could adjust his stories ad hoc to the man who asked.

4) Some results suggest that at some moment Voynich Manuscript wasn't a book but a bunch of loose sheets or maybe even a scroll. It would fit the concept of doctor folding almanac. By carrying such thing with him, the charlatan could pose as a doctor:

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5) It is worth to discuss the general "charlatan" concept. By modern standards every medieval physician could be called a charlatan:
- they believed that you are made of 4 classical elements
- an ilness meant imbalance of these elements which meant e.g. that you are too hot and too humid
- they believed that they can examine hundreds of diseases by looking at your urine
- bloodletting was great for your health
- astrology was very important, medical surgeries should be done with special setup of planets

and so on. Today we know that this is all wrong.

There is however some difference:
- Medieval doctors had diplomas, believed in their work and did the best according to the state of the art knowledge.
- There were also village healers didn't have diplomas but had folk experience and didn't pretend to have formal education.
- Charlatans on the other hand had neither diplomas or folk knowledge and realized their remedies don't work but lied to people
both about their background and about their medicines