Uniquely in western Europe before 1100, Anglo-Saxon England had its own medical literature in the vernacular, and four major medical treatises in OE have survived. Much of the material in them was translated directly from Latin works and thus continued the Graeco-Roman tradition associated especially with Hippocrates and Galen (who themselves drew on traditions going back four thousand years in the Near East). It is probable that the Anglo-Saxon compilers were influenced by a ‘native’ northern European tradition as well. This may originally have been transmitted orally.

Bald's Leechbook (now London, British Library, Royal 12 D. xvii) is one of the four treatises. It is so called because a Latin colophon (concluding statement) written by the scribe declares: ‘Bald is owner of this book, which he ordered Cild to write’. Nothing is known about Bald (or indeed about Cild himself), but this ‘leechbook’ – lœcebōc was the Anglo-Saxons' own term for such a book – was clearly intended for use by a professional ‘leech’ (lœce, ‘physician’). It is a compendium of medical knowledge in two parts. The first has eighty-eight numbered chapters giving remedies for specific disorders, starting with those affecting the head and working systematically down the body (the method of the Greek physicians); the second is a more discursive and learned account of mainly internal disorders, with sixty-seven chapters. Extract (a) below is from item 2 in part one; extracts (b) and (c) are from items 12 and 65, respectively, in part two.