I am not proposing a translation. Instead, I would like to discuss a possible framework for interpreting the relationship between the illustrations and the text.
I've been studying the Voynich Manuscript and a possible interpretation came to mind.
What if the manuscript was created by a physician, herbalist, or early medical practitioner who was not writing continuous prose, but rather recording recipes, treatments, ingredients, quantities, and procedures in a structured system?
In the herbal section, the plants may not represent actual botanical species. Instead, they could represent ingredients used in remedies, medicines, ointments, or preparations intended to treat specific conditions. The unusual composite plants could therefore be visual summaries of the ingredients involved in a treatment rather than illustrations of real plants.
Under this hypothesis, the accompanying text would not necessarily be normal language. It could function more like a catalog or database entry, recording information such as:
- the condition being treated,
- ingredients used,
- quantities or proportions,
- preparation methods,
- application instructions,
- expected effects.
One observation that led me to this idea is the frequent occurrence of similar word families throughout the manuscript. Rather than representing different words in a spoken language, they might represent categories, modifiers, quantities, or variations of the same ingredient or procedure.
The later sections of the manuscript may then describe processes rather than objects. The famous pages with women, pipes, and flowing liquids could represent bodily systems, medical conditions, treatments, or physiological processes. The diagrams may illustrate how a condition develops and how a remedy affects the body.
I also wonder whether the colors themselves carry information. For example, green could indicate a problematic condition, imbalance, or disease state, while blue could represent treatment, transformation, recovery, or a medicinal substance. This is only speculation, but the consistent use of color throughout different sections of the manuscript makes me curious whether it serves a functional purpose rather than being purely decorative.
In this interpretation, the manuscript would not be a conventional book meant to be read from beginning to end. Instead, it would be a structured medical reference system—a physician's private catalog of knowledge, treatments, classifications, and observations.
I am not claiming that this explains the manuscript, but I would be interested to know whether anyone has explored a similar hypothesis, especially regarding the relationship between the illustrations, recurring word families, and possible medical categorization.