It might feel like the dog days of summer are upon us already, but if we’re going by the original use of the term, they don’t really begin until mid-July. The most sweltering days of summer in the Ancient Mediterranean take their name from the way that the Ancients recognized that these hot days echoed the time when the sun enters the constellation “Great Dog,”/ “Canis Major,” (with the brightest star, Sirius, shining in it). Centuries later in a far cooler part of the world – 10th c. CE Britain – a man named Cild recorded medical knowledge of these dog days in a text known to us now as “Bald’s Leechbook.” The Old English depicted here is a section giving health advice for these days, warning, for instance, that bloodletting ought to be avoided – presumably, because it was too hot (bloodletting was an extremely common health practice in Medieval Europe).
Source(s): Image from the British Library Digitized MSS. Folio 55v. https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ .
