The Chaucer Review

New evidence suggests that Thomas Usk, author, scribe, reader of Chaucer, and political factionalist, had anal surgery in the 1370s. This odd, intimate biographical fact adds another piece of information to our knowledge about Usk's life, recently expanded by Caroline Barron's very significant discovery that Usk was clerk for the Goldsmiths' Company.¹ It also tells us more about the circles in which Usk moved and about the community of patients treated by John Arderne, Usk's surgeon. Considering the connection between ­Arderne and Usk might also encourage us to think more about the place of medical writing (and of other "pragmatic" texts) in late-medieval textual communities.

The evidence comes from Arderne's immensely popular medical tract about how to operate on anal fistulas. We know of forty pre-1600 manuscripts of Arderne's Practica, eight of which are in Middle English, representing four separate translations from the Latin.² There are further manuscripts of his other works. Arderne tells us in his works that he was born around 1307, that at the time of the plague (1349–50) he lived at Newark in Nottinghamshire, [End Page 95] and that in 1370 he came to London.³ In 1376, he produced his Practica about the treatment of anal fistulas. Arderne's writings included detailed (often illustrated) descriptions of surgical procedures and served to promote both medical knowledge and John Arderne. Arderne has been described as a "brilliant publicist,"⁴ and his Practica opens with something like a curriculum vitae of a surgeon to the stars as he details his case histories.⁵ His incipit reads, in one of the English translations:

I, John Arderne fro the first pestilence that was in the ʒere of oure lord 1349 duellid in Newerk in Notyngham-shire unto the ʒere of oure lord 1370, and ther I helid many men of fistula in ano. Of whiche the first was Sire Adam Eueryngham of laxton-in-the-clay byside Tukkesford; whiche Sire Adam, forsoth, was in Gascone with sir Henry, that tyme named Erle of derby and aftir was made duke of lancastre, a noble and worthi lord.⁶

Arderne immediately establishes his credentials by giving concrete examples of his success, and the first of his patients is ostentatiously linked to the great nobleman Henry of Lancaster (later father-in-law to John of Gaunt).⁷ He goes on to tell us that Adam could not find relief from any surgeon in Europe, and was given up as incurable. He returned home to die, but Arderne then healed him completely. We are then told of many other successful cures, before we reach the 1370s, and Arderne's arrival in London:

Aftirward, in the ʒere of oure lord 1370, I come to london, and ther I cured Iohn Colyn, Mair of Northampton, that asked counsel at many lecheʒ. Aftirward I helid or cured Hew Denny, ffisshmanger [End Page 96] of london in Briggestrete; and William Polle, and Raufe Double; and oon that was called Thomas Broune, that had 15 holes by whiche went out wynde with egestious odour; that is to sey, 8 holeʒ of the to[ne] party of the ersse, and 7 on the tothir side; Of whiche some holeʒ was distant fro the towell by the space of the handbrede of a man, so that bothe his buttokis was so ulcerat and putrefied with-in that the quitour and filthe went out ich day als mych as an egg-shel miʒt take. Afterward I cured 4 frereʒ prechours, that is to sey ffrere Iohn Writell, ffrere Iohn haket, ffrere Petre Browne, ffrere Thomas Apperley, and a ʒong man called Thomas Voke.⁸

The last of Arderne's patients named here was, I believe, not Thomas Voke but Thomas Usk. In the manuscripts used by D'Arcy Power for the EETS edition (quoted above)⁹ and also in some other manuscripts, the name does look like Voke, or is ambiguous,¹⁰ but in other manuscripts—including some of the earliest—it is clearly Uske.¹¹ I have examined sixteen manuscripts which contain the name. In terms of date, one of the fourteenth-century...