Voynich's anatomy

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I think, knowing you have a copy, means that perhaps you could write and ask the person or place who had the original, or someone else who may have a copy, for another look at it, or another copy of the page (hopefully made by someone else), if you couldn't understand it, (i think it would be interesting to check one's copy against someone else's copy, just as we enjoy comparing them all now.)

That may have been the ideal, but it would rarely be practical or worth the trouble.  When someone wanted a copy of some book, he would borrow it, hand it to a professional scribe. A couple weeks later the customer would get back the book with the copy, and would then return the former to its owner,  The copyist would not spend any time trying to understand the original.  The customer would not keep the original long enough to check the copy; and even if he saw some errors in the figures, correcting those errors would be hard and pointless.

[quote]But the lack of notes correcting weird things might mean that these are just things to have? As opposed to things to read or refer to, to use and learn from.

Indeed, then as of now, many books got bought or copied mainly "to have" rather than "to read". 

All the best, --stolfi