Jordanus Rufus's De medicina equorum - Chapter 3: On the management and education of the horse
Les Vigiles de Charles VII , Martial d'Auvergne (c.1484) BnF, MS Fr. 5054, fol. 11r (c) Bibliothèque nationale de France In 1250, the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus wrote the most significant veterinary treatise of his time, the De medicina equorum, which discussed and gave remedies for a large variety of diseases, from farcy (a contagious and often fatal bacterial disease), to colic, to hoof injuries. This treatise also contains the only original method for training horses in medieval Western Europe. This method was initially destined to warhorses but it ended up being applied on other types of horses. In a series of three articles, I will present an English translation of the first three chapters of the treatise which contain the training method. This translation is based on the Latin edition made in 1818 by Jérôme Molin: because the original manuscript written by Rufus is lost, the edition, which recreates what the original text could have been, based o...
