Baked owl powder and roasted puppy fat among bizarre medieval cures revealed in Cambridge University project

Baking a salted owl and grinding it into powder to treat gout is one of the bizarre suggestions found among thousands of medieval medical remedies.

Stuffing a puppy with snail and sage, roasting it over a fire and using the fat to make a salve, is another suggested gout cure. Someone suffering from cataracts hundreds of years ago would be advised to mix the gall bladder of a hare with some honey and use a feather to apply it to their eye. The treatments are among 8,000 medical recipes contained in 180 medieval manuscripts - mostly dating to the 14th or 15th centuries - that are being digitised by the Cambridge University Library.They also give an insight into the violence of medieval life, with advice on how to discover if a skull has been fractured after a weapon injury, as well as how to set broken bones and stop bleeding.

Some contain detailed illustrations and show doctors used a"bewildering array of ingredients" - animal, vegetable and mineral, said project leader Dr James Freeman.

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