Percolation Vessels

By my account, the Voynich manuscript is essentially a pharmacological text. What is presented in the illustrations is a method of aqueous extraction. The argument is set out in full at this link. 

Essential to the argument is a reading of the vessels depicted in the ms. as percolators. I have described their purpose thus:

The method in the VM involves the strange vessels depicted in the pharmacological sections of the work. Evidently, the prepared herbs illustrated with these vessels are placed in layers inside the vessels. Water is added at the top and it percolates through. There may be virtue in adding hot water but it is a slow method which might takes days or longer. 

But it can be enhanced by adding intervening layers of stones or sand, compacting each layer of botanical material. Essentially, it is a herb press through which water percolates, collecting as much of the juices and exudates as possible. Gradations of sand act as filters to remove coarse mterial, leaving at the end, a liquid essence.

This in principle is how the vessels depicted in the Voynich ms. work. They are not storage vessels. They are clearly shown containing water. If we cannot find contemporary examples of exactly such vessels, perhaps they were merely proposed, and the ms. is setting out a theoretical method of aqueous extraction rather than a traditional or established one.  

But there is nothing anachronistic about the principle. Pressing herbs and water extraction are standard medieval methods in themselves, especially prior to the intrusion of ethanol tinctures. In the Voynich ms. someone is proposing, or demonstrating, a device - perhaps a new invention - designed to be used for this purpose. 

* * * 

It is a straightforward matter to demonstrate this from pictures in the manuscript. I present some of them below. We can clearly see:

*The vessels contain water. (Blue = fresh, green = mineralized, red = hot)

*The water is shown moving (percolating) down through layers of the vessel. 

This, I maintain, is a natural reading of these pictures - and far more plausible than microscopes(!) and other proposals. 

Blue water at the top, and at other levels of the vessel. 

This appears to show the interior of a vessel with hot (red) water percolating through a coarse material. 

A complete account of these vessels - what they are and what they are not - is required, but in the first instance it is enough to demonstrate that my account of them - and aqueous extraction - is a plausible, or even likely, reading of the pictures.