A medical compendium composed between 1475 and 1493 is the oldest preserved scientific book from the city of Nijmegen. It belonged to dr. Henricus Spijker, who was connected to the church (collegiate church from 1475) of St Stephen’s in Nijmegen between 1470 and 1493. Spijker had studied arts in Cologne and medicine in Padua, and his medical compendium contains all the practical information needed by a late fifteenth-century doctor. Besides medical treatises, it contains an astrolabe and a lavishly illustrated herbarium.
The current project discloses the manuscript to a wider audience by making it digitally available. It furthermore aims to trace the life of its owner, Henricus Spijker, and the role he played in the city of Nijmegen between 1470 and 1493. Lastly, the project places the manuscript to its wider European context by connecting it to comparable medical compendia. In so doing, the project sheds light on the status of medical science in late medieval Nijmegen.
