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Nichola Harris, Ph.D.
“Manuscripts, Manuals, and Masters: The Role of the Lapidary within the Medical Market Place of Early
Modern Europe"
Presented at the American Association for the History of Medicine at Yale University, New Haven, CT
May 1 - 3, 2015
Manuscripts, Manuals, and Masters: The Role of the Lapidary within the Medical Market Place of
Early Modern Europe
The assortment of medical professionals practicing within the early modern medical market place was as
diverse and eccentric as the treatments they administered. This paper seeks to add to the established
ranks of pre-modern health care providers by recognizing the role of a little-known purveyor of cures
and therapies within this community: the lapidary. While commonly defined as one who works with or
sells stones and jewelry, print and manuscript sources suggest that a “lapidary,” or lapidarius, occupied
a professional position parallel to an herbalist or apothecary and dispensed material cures
recommended by contemporary physicians, midwives, and pharmacopeias. An expert on the natural
healing virtues of materials which fell within the pharmacological category of “stones” as established by
the natural studies and medical treatises of the ancient and medieval world, working lapidaries sold
gemstones and therapeutic items of jewelry while dispensing knowledge about their medicinal
properties and correct application. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, lapidaries catered
to the consumer audiences of works such as Johannes de Cuba’s Hortus Sanitatis and Nicholas
Culpeper’s The London Dispensatory, selling stones intended to ease the pain of childbirth, protect
infants from fevers and convulsions, staunch bleeding, neutralize poison or snakebites, and cure
melancholy.
To reveal the role of the lapidary within the consumer-driven medical marketplace of early modern
Europe, this paper will explore references to and representations of lapidaries in popular print,
comparing their status and function to other healthcare professionals operating in the same
environment. Drawing on the personal journal of a master lapidary working in seventeenth-century
London, it will also closely examine the items for sale within an early modern lapidary shop along with
intended uses found within contemporary manuals of popular healing. A combination of personal advice
and details drawn from Albertus Magnus’ thirteenth-century treatise Mineralia, the journal offers
practical business guidance for an apprentice or heir. Using print, manuscript and archeological
evidence, this study seeks to create a fuller understanding of the medical role of a lapidary and the
popular practice of lapidary medicine within medieval and early modern society.
1. Explain the role of a lapidary in prescribing, dispensing, and selling cures within the medical market
place of early modern Europe.
2. Recognize the connection between medical therapies and material cures and those found in early
modern pharmacopeias and printed manuals of popular healing.
3. Understand the circulation and continued use of medieval medical manuscripts within the popular
print culture of early modern Europe.