[Controversial interpretations of the Lorsch medical codex]

Next to the late Heinrich Schipperges, Gundolf Keil, M.D. and Ph.D. (Medieval German), ranks as one of the foremost German medical historians of the Western Middle Ages. Among his lasting merits is the publication of the MS Bamb. med. 1, called by him Lorscher Arzneibuch (Lorsch Medical Manual), which was written during the first years of the 9th century in the abbey of Lorsch (near Worms). Keil maintained that this work was not only the first medical book copied in the German-speaking area but that it was also drawn up in Lorsch and contained e.g. an unequivocal statement of Carolingian health policy, and that it referred, for the first time in the early Middle Ages, to the therapeutic uses of penicillin, glycosides, and hypericin (an active ingredient of St John's wort). Such interpretations will be scrutinized and challenged in the following article.