“Black urine with fat above, and with an evil savour, and without any sickness or pain in the loins or in the bladder, with an ague, it sayeth death…”
Henry Daniel’s Liber Uricrisiarum is full of such pearls of medical wisdom. In it, the fourteenth-century English medical writer Henry Daniel explains medical diagnosis and theory: namely, when urine betokens death. Daniel’s Liber Uricrisiarum and his Herbal, which deals with the therapeutic applications of botanical knowledge, are immensely important. They not only synthesize a long tradition of Latin learning into the English vernacular, but they also reveal Daniel’s detailed knowledge of contemporary medical and herbal practice. They are among the earliest such treatises in English, yet they remain minimally studied and nearly invisible to scholars. The Henry Daniel Project seeks to make these works accessible to all.