A previously undiscovered Irish vellum manuscript has revealed a connection between Gaelic Ireland and the Muslim world in the study of medicine in the 15th century.
The document, found in Britain, is a fragment of a translation into Irish of the ‘Canon of Medicine’ by Ibn Sena, an Islamic physician of note.
The manuscript is described as one of the significant texts arising from the Islamic Golden Age.
Academics say the discovery in Cornwall illustrates how Medieval Ireland was to the fore in the study of medicine during this era.
A quarter of what survives of late medieval manuscripts in the Irish language is medical in content.
