Welcome to ‘Old Books, New Attitudes,’ a student-centered initiative to transcribe and digitally reconstruct the medieval medical manuscript collection of a single early modern collector, the Elizabethan English gentleman Henry Dyngley.

As of Spring 2026, work is underway to transcribe and publish Trinity College Cambridge MS O.8.35, a textbook-like manuscript of Middle English medical knowledge that came into Dyngley’s possession no later than 1554. The digital edition of this manuscript, one of at least five Middle English medical compendia owned and annotated by Dyngley, is a work-in-progress. Its publication is being undertaken by students at Texas Christian University in subsequent semesters of “Technologies of History from Cuneiform to Coding,” taught by Dr. Melissa Reynolds.

To learn more about Henry Dyngley and his manuscript collection, visit the Introduction page.

To read about student-centered transcription, digital history, and the digital platforms and tools involved in this project, visit the About page.

To read a partial transcription of one of Dyngley’s manuscripts, Trinity College Cambridge MS O.8.35, visit the TCC MS O.8.35 page.

The next phase of the project will tackle Wellcome MS 5262, perhaps the first manuscript to enter Dyngley’s collection. Though there are no transcriptions of the manuscript available yet, you can view the digitized facsimile on the Wellcome MS 5262 page.

Finally, if you’d like to view the transcription work that students have completed so far, check out the Credits page!