Voynich's anatomy

[JoJo_Jost]

I would like to add that, whilst, as stolfi said, the dissection of corpses did take place at universities, these corpses had to be ‘released’ under very specific conditions. Exhuming corpses without authorisation was a criminal offence and was also strongly frowned upon by society.

A researcher not affiliated with a university could therefore have got into serious trouble. (That would also explain the poor quality of the vellum.)

This directly explains three aspects of the VMS

1. Why is a pharmaceutical medical book encrypted in the first place? To prevent anyone from realising that someone had been dissecting corpses without authorisation.

2. Why are these bathing scenes so strange – and why do they bear at least some resemblance to certain organs? If they are organs, then they were deliberately drawn so indistinctly so that they would not be recognised as such, and people would think they were bathing nymphs

3. These bathing nymphs would then have been merely part of the cipher, because they distract from what it really is.

I’m not saying they are anatomical drawings; I don’t know that – but this theory has a certain plausibility that explains at least a few of the aspects. That’s all there is to it, but no less either...