this is a summa chiromantia manuscript in houghton library that i was trying to work on the summer before last for my history of medieval medicine class. you can now see it in all its splendour as part of the harvard open access digital medieval manuscripts collection!

it's a very small book, about 14cm tall, for which i bought a magnifying glass, and i pored so long over it, transcribing at such an embarrassing rate that they took it away from me and handed me the microfilms instead, which meant that i could see even less, in out-of-focus black and white, although by using the microfilms i was about to run off some enlarged copies (they were no good, ultimately, being uncoloured and so blurry, but at least i could hold a pen near it and trace the outlines of the words. but if i were working on it today this would have been invaluable, the clarity of the images, enlargeable and in full colour, is better than working with the actual manuscript. i've set the document to the first page (of four) of illustrations of the hand, but scroll back to look at the text too, because it's beautiful. i'm rubbish at reading latin abbreviations, i'll admit that right away, (never found a capelli either!) but oh, i like the touch and smell of manuscripts, i do!