Treatments for battle wounds are among the remedies described – but Cambridge researchers say many targets a familiar set of ailments such as headache, toothache, diarrhoea, coughs and aching limbs.

Baking a salted owl and grinding it into powder to treat gout is one of the bizarre suggestions found among thousands of medieval medical remedies.

Stuffing a puppy with snail and sage, roasting it over a fire and using the fat to make a salve, is another suggested gout cure.

Someone suffering from cataracts hundreds of years ago would be advised to mix the gall bladder of a hare with some honey and use a feather to apply it to their eye.

The treatments are among 8,000 medical recipes contained in 180 medieval manuscripts – mostly dating to the 14th or 15th centuries – that are being digitised by the Cambridge University Library.

However, some date back even earlier, with one being 1,000 years old.

The texts come from a dozen Cambridge colleges, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library, and are being preserved as part of the £500,000 Curious Cures project.

Full transcriptions of the remedies and high-res images will be made freely available in the Cambridge Digital Library.