leechbook

English edit

From Middle English leche (“blood-sucking worm”), from Old English lǣċe (“medical doctor”) + boc (“book”).

leechbook (plural leechbooks)

A medical text of the Anglo-Saxon era; a compilation of medicinal cures and remedies used by leeches.
- 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 257:
  One of the old Leech Books gives the formula for a salve against the "elfin race and nocturnal goblin visitors." Fourteen herbs, including wormwood, viper's bugloss and fennel, were first gathered.
- 2004, J. P. Griffin Venetian treacle and the foundation of medicines regulation
  The first was directly from Byzantine or other eastern sources, for example a Saxon leechbook of the 11th century records that Abel the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent Mithridatium or theriac to King Alfred the Great, who died on 26 October 899