Salted owl and roasted puppy: Cambridge University to digitise medieval cures

‘Behind each recipe there lies a human story’ … a 16th-century diagram of the human body showing the veins to be opened for blood-letting. Photograph: Cambridge University

Thousands of unedited medical recipes – from a gout cure that involves stuffing a puppy with snails and sage to a cataract treatment that uses the gall bladder of a hare – are to be published by Cambridge university library.

Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries is a two-year project to digitise, catalogue and conserve over 180 medieval manuscripts from the university’s library, the Fitzwilliam museum and a dozen Cambridge colleges.