A sixteenth-century copy of a Middle English commentary on Giles of Corbeil's verse treatise De urinis, closely related to Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 328. According to Professor Tess Tavormina, Michigan State University, 'The copy in the Manchester manuscript doesn't have the prologue in Hunter 328, and it also omits the quotations of passages from Giles's Latin text that occur in the Glasgow manuscript, but it does repeat the line drawings of urine flasks in the earlier copy and the English texts are very close in the passages I was able to compare, from the beginning, middle and end.' (Email to Keeper of Manuscripts and Archives, 4 September 2006.)
Contents: (1) ff. 1-13v, 'Blac vryn hath evermor' a swartnesse and a dymnes the which accordith most to blacnesse... and make a confection therof and vse it often τελοσ.' A treatise on the diagnosis of urine by colour. The colours are in the same order as in British Library, Sloane 568, ff. 201-14: 'blac', 'bloo', 'whyte', 'glauk', 'mylkye', 'karapos', 'pale', 'citrine', 'rufe', 'subruf', 'red', 'rubicunde', 'ynopos' and 'grene'. Line drawings of urine flasks in text.
(2) ff. 13v-21, 'Ther ben iiii regiouns in mannys body vrin gordianus the first... uryn blac and watry in a fat man mortes significat.' The treatise covers the 'regions', 'circule', 'ampulla', 'granum vel granula', 'nubecula', 'spuma', 'sanies', fatness, thinness, oiliness, sediments (f. 19v To the ypostasis shuld long v condicions... ), signs of death, etc.. A similar Latin text is in British Library, Harley 1612, ff. 4v-9v ('Regiones urine sunt quatuor...' (f. 9v) Ypostasis debet habere v conditiones...').
In both items sentences usually end with the name of an authority, for example Ysaac, Avicenna, Egidius, Walterius, Gordianus, Galen, Ptolomeus, Theophilus and Gilbertus.
Script: Both items are in the same secretary hand: the bracket is employed to show a parenthesis (f. 16v: 'Also it is to be vnderstond that (as techeth the commentoure upon gilis) that iii thingis...'). Written space: 230 x 150 mm. c.40 long lines.
Secundo folio: Blac vrin.
Decoration: 5-line, 3-line, and 2-line initials in red ink.
Other features: No ruling: the edge of the leaf has been folded to make a vertical bounder. There are ink drawings of urine flasks on ff. 1r, 2v, 3v, 5v, 6v, 7r, 8r, 9r, 10r, 11r, 12r, 12v and 13r.
Description derived from N.R. Ker, Medieval manuscripts in British libraries, vol. III, Lampeter-Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 427-8. By permission of Oxford University Press.