Though John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) is remembered principally for his work as a theorist, art critic, and historian of visual culture, he wrote exhaustively about his health in his correspondence and diaries. Ruskin was prone to recurring depressive and hypochondriacal feelings in his youth and adulthood. In 1871, at the age of 52, he developed an i…[Read more]

This thesis is a study of all aspects of writing and reading connected with Sir John
Fastolf, a military captain and steward of the household of John Duke of Bedford,
who returned to England from the later battles of the Hundred Years War in 1438.
Using the circumstantial, palaeographical, and codicological evidence contained in
the letters,…[Read more]

The modern and medieval meanings of words reporting ill health often bear little resemblance to one another. This article compares the use of ‘diseased’ and ‘sick’ in the fifteenth-century Stonor family letters. It examines the word ‘crased’, which implies physical ill health most directly, but also suggests emotional, psychological, or spiritua…[Read more]

“Nonsense rides piggyback on sensible things”, declares professional sceptic and questioned-document analyst Joe Nickell concerning graphology. This chapter examines graphology’s enduring allure and reach, despite its controversies, and considers its relationship with other types of handwriting analysis. It first asks: is it possible to metap…[Read more]

‘A Complaint against Blacksmiths’, unique to BL, MS Arundel 292, may gesture towards fourteenth-century legislation against night-time work, yet is underpinned by delight in the sights and sounds of the forge. The smith’s smoke-smattered visage is simultaneously disgraceful and inspiring to its medieval audience. Many of us experience a diffe…[Read more]

Handwritten texts carry significant information, extending beyond the meaning of their words. Modern neurology, for example, benefits from the interpretation of the graphic features of writing and drawing for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases and disorders. This article examines how handwriting analysis can be used, and has been used…[Read more]

This article identifies Ricardus Franciscus as the scribe of Kew, The National Archives, C 49/30/19, a petition seeking the exoneration of the late Duke Humphrey of Gloucester.
(d. 1447). The authors provide a palaeographical analysis of the “flamboyant, spiky script” of the well-known scribe Franciscus in this document, which support the…[Read more]

Before 1911, when Hermann Oppenheim introduced the term dystonia, this movement disorder lacked a unifying descriptor. While words like epilepsy, apoplexy, and palsy have had their meanings since antiquity, references to dystonia are much harder to identify in historical documents. Torticollis is an exception, although there is difficulty…[Read more]