The Voynich Manuscript as a Procedural Medical System: A Functional Reinterpretation of Its Herbal, Balneological, and Zodiacal Sections

This work presents a functional reinterpretation of the Voynich Manuscript as a medieval medical–procedural system rather than a descriptive botanical, linguistic, or cryptographic text. Instead of assuming that the manuscript aims to name or explain elements of the natural world, this study argues that it is designed to regulate therapeutic actions, material states, and regimen timing within a professional medical context. Through a systematic folio-by-folio analysis of the herbal, balneological, and zodiacal sections, the manuscript is shown to operate as a coherent procedural architecture. Images function as selectors of available materials, while the text controls the operational state of active substances and the sequence of interventions. Recurrent textual elements are interpreted as state markers and control operators rather than lexical labels, allowing consistent functional translations across sections. The zodiacal material is reinterpreted as a temporal control layer governing the activation, modulation, and suspension of medical regimens over an annual cycle, comparable to medieval medical calendars and almanacs but applied at the level of the regimen itself rather than individual bodily states. The proposed model demonstrates strong internal consistency and clear correspondence with late medieval medical traditions, particularly regimina sanitatis, balneotherapy manuals, and iatromathematical practices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This study does not claim a full linguistic decipherment or definitive botanical identification of the illustrated plants, which are treated as independent open problems. Instead, it establishes how the Voynich Manuscript functions, how it can be translated operationally, and how it can be situated within a historically plausible medical framework.