---
title: "Editing Middle English Medical Manuscripts : The Case of Glasgow — paper by Esteban-Segura (2011)"
description: "The author first describes transcription, which turned out to be far from mechanical. 12 references."
authors: ["María Laura Esteban-Segura"]
year: 2011
venue: "Journal of English Studies 9"
source: "https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/view/166"
doi: "10.18172/jes.166"
licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Journal of English Studies)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/esteban-segura-2011-editing-middle-english-medical-manuscripts/"
---
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# Editing Middle English Medical Manuscripts : The Case of Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 509

**Authors:** María Laura Esteban-Segura · **Year:** 2011 · **Venue:** [Journal of English Studies 9](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/the-journal-of-english-studies/) ([The Journal of English Studies 2011](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/the-journal-of-english-studies/2011/)) · **Publisher:** [University of La Rioja](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-of-la-rioja/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Journal of English Studies)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.166) · [PDF](https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/download/166/146) · [DOI 10.18172/jes.166](https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.166) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W28123386)

**Citations:** 2 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The article walks through the editorial workflow for a single Middle English medical manuscript, Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 509 (H509). The manuscript holds a *System of Physic*, mostly the Middle English Gilbertus Anglicus, a prose adaptation (ca. 1400) of Gilbert the Englishman's thirteenth-century *Compendium medicinae*. The main text was copied around 1460.

The author first describes transcription, which turned out to be far from mechanical. Problems included:
- letter shapes that look alike;
- one graph serving for both þ and y;
- abbreviation signs that can stand for several letter groups;
- unseparated minims;
- dense punctuation that is hard to tell apart from stains.

For each problem she gives a practical way to resolve it. Lemmatisation, morphological tagging and concordance generation followed. The text was then published in two forms:
- a semi-diplomatic electronic edition with images side by side, part of a roughly 1.2-million-token corpus of medieval scientific prose;
- a printed edition that mixes diplomatic and critical methods.

A glossary keyed to MED headwords and a full list of lemmas complete the edition. The work matters because it makes an unedited scientific text usable for linguistic research.

## Key points
- H509 has more than 170 folios (over 350 pages). Folios 14r–167v contain the Middle English Gilbertus Anglicus, arranged head-to-foot (*de capite ad pedem*).
- When a nasal abbreviation could be read as either m or n, the editor checked how the word is spelled in full elsewhere and chose the more frequent form. For example, 'emplastre' was preferred over 'enplastre'.
- Concordances show the lemma, five words of left and right context, the keyword and a folio/line reference. They can be sorted by lemma, by the −1 column or by keyword. For example, sorting by −1 showed that *cold* is mostly predicative, typically after the 3sg present of *ben*.
- The electronic edition is hosted at hunter.uma.es. It belongs to joint projects of Málaga, Murcia, Jaén, Oviedo and Glasgow, and its corpus is about 1,200,000 tokens.
- For illegible passages, the printed edition consulted MS Hunter 307 and Getz's edition of MS Wellcome 537. It uses two apparatus layers at the foot of the page: one for scribal errors, corrections, headings and catchwords, and one for marginalia.

## Interesting ideas
- When a reading is ambiguous, look up how the same text spells the word without abbreviation, and fall back to the majority variant if both forms occur; the corpus itself serves as the tie-breaker.
- Where many letter combinations are possible (minims, the shared þ/y graph), the editor lists every candidate, checks each against a dictionary and lets context make the final choice.
- The transcription is graphemic rather than graphetic: positional letter shapes are merged into one grapheme, while real distinctions such as thorn and yogh are kept.
- A faithful diplomatic layer and a normalised critical layer are produced from one transcription, and every editorial change is recorded in an apparatus instead of silently overwriting the source.
- Re-sorting a KWIC concordance by the word immediately to the left of the keyword quickly reveals the dominant construction, such as predicative *cold* after *ben*.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (tokens): Our lemmatiser could resolve ambiguous spellings or tokens by counting unambiguous occurrences of each candidate in the same document before turning to global statistics.
- **I2** (tokens): Out-of-vocabulary or OCR-damaged words could be expanded into a candidate set, filtered by the lexicon and then chosen by syntactic fit, with the rejected candidates logged for explainability.
- **I3** (tokens): This suggests a normalisation layer that folds purely visual variants into one form but never merges characters that carry meaning.
- **I4** (learn): Silver data and repair rules could keep the original parse beside each corrected version, along with a record of the edit, so that every fix stays auditable.
- **I5** (tree): Sorting a treebank's concordances by head or left neighbour could serve as a cheap check that a parser's attachments for an adjective match its typical usage.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Universidad de Murcia](https://ror.org/03p3aeb86).

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## Cite

Cite as: María Laura Esteban-Segura. 2011. Editing Middle English Medical Manuscripts : The Case of Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 509. Journal of English Studies 9.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{estebansegura2011editing,
  title = {{Editing Middle English Medical Manuscripts : The Case of Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 509}},
  author = {María Laura Esteban-Segura},
  journal = {Journal of English Studies 9},
  year = {2011},
  doi = {10.18172/jes.166},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.166}
}
```

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## References

12 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Esteban-Segura, L. 2008a. G.U.L. MS Hunter 509 (ff. 1r-167v): An Edition and Philological Study. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Esteban%2DSegura%2C+L%2E+2008a%2E+G%2EU%2EL%2E+MS+Hunter+509+%28ff%2E+1r%2D167v%29%3A+An+Edition+and+Philological+Study%2E+Unpublished+Ph%2ED%2E+thesis%2E+M%C3%A1laga%3A+Universidad+de+M%C3%A1laga%2E)
2. Esteban-Segura, L. 2008b. “Hands and Script in Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 509”. Proceedings from the 31st AEDEAN Conference. Ed. M. J. Lorenzo Modia. A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña. 417-432. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Esteban%2DSegura%2C+L%2E+2008b%2E+%E2%80%9CHands+and+Script+in+Glasgow+University+Library+MS+Hunter+509%E2%80%9D%2E+Proceedings+from+the+31st+AEDEAN+Conference%2E+Ed%2E+M%2E+J%2E+Lorenzo+Modia%2E+A+Coru%C3%B1a%3A+Universidade+da+Coru%C3%B1a%2E+417%2D43)
3. Esteban-Segura, L. 2009. “Punctuation Practice in G.U.L. MS Hunter 509”. Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts. Eds. J. E. Díaz Vera and R. Caballero. Bern: Peter Lang. 93-107. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Esteban%2DSegura%2C+L%2E+2009%2E+%E2%80%9CPunctuation+Practice+in+G%2EU%2EL%2E+MS+Hunter+509%E2%80%9D%2E+Textual+Healing%3A+Studies+in+Medieval+English+Medical%2C+Scientific+and+Technical+Texts%2E+Eds%2E+J%2E+E%2E+D%C3%ADaz+Vera+and+R%2E+Caballero%2E+Be)
4. Esteban-Segura, L. 2010. “Dialectal Study of a Version of the Middle English Gilbertus Anglicus: The Case of G.U.L. MS Hunter 509 (ff. 14r-167v)”, English Studies 91 (3): 256-273. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1080/00138381003637591)
5. Getz, F. M., ed. 1991. Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Getz%2C+F%2E+M%2E%2C+ed%2E+1991%2E+Healing+and+Society+in+Medieval+England%3A+A+Middle+English+Translation+of+the+Pharmaceutical+Writings+of+Gilbertus+Anglicus%2E+Madison%3A+University+of+Wisconsin+Press%2E)
6. Glick, T. F., Livesey S. and F. Wallis, eds. 2005. Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. New York/London: Routledge. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Glick%2C+T%2E+F%2E%2C+Livesey+S%2E+and+F%2E+Wallis%2C+eds%2E+2005%2E+Medieval+Science%2C+Technology%2C+and+Medicine%3A+An+Encyclopedia%2E+New+York%2FLondon%3A+Routledge%2E)
7. Handerson, H. E. 1918. Gilbertus Anglicus. Medicine of the Thirteenth Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Medical Library Association. [Electronic resource. 2005. The Project Gutenberg eBook. Available from \<[http://www.gutenberg.org/](http://www.gutenberg.org/) etext/16155>] (Accessed 20 January 2011). [↗](http://www.gutenberg.org/)
8. Keiser, G. R. 1998. “Editing Scientific and Practical Writings. A Guide to Editing Middle English. Eds. V. P. McCarren and D. Moffat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 109-122. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Keiser%2C+G%2E+R%2E+1998%2E+%E2%80%9CEditing+Scientific+and+Practical+Writings%2E+A+Guide+to+Editing+Middle+English%2E+Eds%2E+V%2E+P%2E+McCarren+and+D%2E+Moffat%2E+Ann+Arbor%3A+University+of+Michigan+Press%2E+109%2D122%2E)
9. Lewis, R. E. et al., eds. 1952-2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Online version in Middle English Compendium. 2001-. Ed. F. McSparran et al. University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Available from \<[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/)> (Accessed 20 January 2011). [↗](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/)
10. Moffat, D. 1998. “Making a Glossary”. A Guide to Editing Middle English. Eds. V. P. McCarren and D. Moffat. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 237-246. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Moffat%2C+D%2E+1998%2E+%E2%80%9CMaking+a+Glossary%E2%80%9D%2E+A+Guide+to+Editing+Middle+English%2E+Eds%2E+V%2E+P%2E+McCarren+and+D%2E+Moffat%2E+Ann+Arbor%3A+University+of+Michigan+Press%2E+237%2D246%2E)
11. Simpson, J. A. and E. S. C. Weiner, eds. 2004. The Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition on CD-ROM. Version 3.1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Simpson%2C+J%2E+A%2E+and+E%2E+S%2E+C%2E+Weiner%2C+eds%2E+2004%2E+The+Oxford+English+Dictionary%2E+Second+Edition+on+CD%2DROM%2E+Version+3%2E1%2E+Oxford%3A+Oxford+University+Press%2E)
12. Journal of English Studies, vol. 9 (2011) 97-108 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Journal+of+English+Studies%2C+vol%2E+9+%282011%29+97%2D108)

*Updated 24 October 2026*