ABSTRACT
Entry 57 of Leechbook III is a brief, vague remedy that is ambiguous but has a long history of being interpreted as a reference to witchcraft. This essay assesses how potential female voices and bodies in the Old English medical corpus have been interpreted as agents of harm by modern scholars, based on thin philological evidence. This essay relies on a combination of lexis, syntax, and context to interpret a thinly attested Old English illness label and propose a previously overlooked female patient in Leechbook III. The case of wif gemædla serves as a reminder that scholarship of early medieval English medicine continues to rely heavily on nineteenth-century translations and editions, which has left us with a legacy of outdated editorial and cultural assumptions that now require updating.
