The quality of the drawings also suggests an earlier date. the "Wolkenband" ([snaky line drawn here]) shown on Plate XXI appears over and over again in Italian XV century manuscripts. I believe it came down from the north, but I am unable to say when. I shall look forward with the greatest interest to your future publications on the subject. Sincerely, Erla Rodakiewicz I note you suggest that the dialect used as decoded material does not coincide with the language used by Roger Askham in his Scholmaster. Please do not confuse Roger with Anthony. I may also say that the dialect does not coincide with that used by Anthony Askham in the Little Herbal, a microfilm of the Huntington copy of which I own. It is also very doubtful whether Anthony Askham ever wrote the Little Herbal. I am still not convinced that Dr. John Dee may have more to do with the origin of the Voynich manuscript than mere ownership. Perhaps there may have been more relationship between Anthony Askham and Dr. John Dee than appears on the surface, similar to the relationship existing between Billingsley and Dr. John Dee in the writing of the mathematical books. You no doubt know that Dr. John Dee wrote in several English dialects, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Latin, German, and several others, he also had an interest in cypher writing, was an astrologer, which the author of the Voynich manuscript obviously was, and had all the characteristics presented herein. Someday if I get the opportunity I shall continue this investigation further but am convinced now that the only place that this can be done is in the British Museum. A recent letter from them states that for the duration their original manuscripts have been removed from London and are not available for study. I trust that you keep this information concerning Dr. John Dee confidential for the time being as I am not willing to publish this idea now. the description of the birth of the child and all other material from the Voynich manuscript were decoded according to mathematical rules and the whole passage covering several pages makes continued sense. It must of necessity therefore be correct. I have not read anything into the passage that was not put there in cypher by the original author. The only reason why I have not published more of my decoded material is because I have been advised by a newspaper man, and A. P. editor, that the true contents is so frank it could not be published at the present time, even after DeKruif published his book on the male sex hormone. If your editors question any of these statements I should be delighted to demonstrate, in person, before them the true cypher of the Voynich Manuscript. I have your kind letter of July 19th at hand. I also felt a sense of relief when I found that the Voynich Cipher was not nearly as involved as either Newbold or Feely tried to make out. Unfortunately the owners of the manuscript were unwilling to cooperate to the extent of furnishing me with a photostatic copy so that the work could go on. ... As a matter of fact, I still believe his influence was tremendous on the real author, either as an author or friend. His book on Demonology should be reinvestigated from the statement by the distinguished biologist, Robert Hooke. I am afraid you have been expecting to find more material here relating to Dr. Anthony Ascham than we in fact possess. All that we have in this Department is: - A litle Herball of the properties of Herbes. [1550] Press-mark:C.31.b.21. An Almanacke and Prognostication ... M.V.C.L.V. Press-mark: 1880.d.9.(1) thanks a million for your letter of January 2. Your contact with the specialist of the opposite sex has posed a very embarrassing problem in my mind. Most of the manuscript that I have decoded is an extremely frank auto-biographical sexual history of the author and I would be much embarrassed to consult the lady about it. However, I shall have a copy of my decoded material with me in Amsterdam and I shall let you read it and to use your judgment whether further consultation with Mrs. Boer den Hoed is desirable. We shall be in Amsterdam between May 15-21. The sentence "when ... crawknot" in the offprint you sent (returned herewith) is not Irish Gaelic in vocabulary or syntax. It is true that there is in modern Irish a demonstrative adj. spell seo but that makes no sense in this context, where seo may be quite another word. I cannot see any grounds for supposing the sentence to be Gaelic. It is still a mystery why so much cypher was resorted to but of course there probably were several reasons. I was told by one of the legatees mentioned in Mr. Voynich's will that as an undecypherable manuscript it would be worth more than it would be with the cypher known, when then it becomes another manuscript in the history of medicine. Whether the owners still have this opinion I do not know and I would not like to be quoted on the matter. The key to the code can be found in Porta and Trithemius. It is also discussed in the Cryptomenes of Gustavus Selenus, a copy of which I own. This is all I can say on the method. Frankly there is a personal matter involved here. I feel that since I determined the method of the code that I should be given the opportunity of decyphering the entire manuscript or at least that part which appeals to me. ... I feel that the Voynich manuscript is a very important one in the history of medicine, perhaps not containing any great contributions in the art of medicine, but perhaps an attempt has been made to rationalize on medical lore possessed by the English peasant of the early 16th century, also on the reinterpretation of astrology and the influence on the stars of human disease and an evaluation of a man's life (particularly sex physiology) in relation to the community. If you will look on the last page of John Dee's Actions with Spirits which was published in 1659 you will find a very interesting page. By dividing the page into two parts you will find that one half has exactly the same frequency distribution of word size that is found in the Voynich manuscript. If anybody be interested in working out this cypher, you will find the identical cypher which I determined in the Voynich manuscript. The only difference being in the number of alphabets used and the difference in the arithmetical progressions." Hudson View Gardens I have had a very interesting correspondence with the Colonel among which is his statement that he wanted me to publish nothing but to submit all my decypherment to him. Without the entire manuscript and more time than I can spare from a career in cancer research no further progress can be made. I have decyphered all the charts available to me, the ones that appear [in] "the Cypher of Roger Bacon" by Newbold. I admit that I do not have the complete multiple alphabet, but I have enough to convince me that I am on the right track. If I would publish what I do have somebody, especially in Washington, with all the modern machinery for decypherment, could take my system and complete the entire manuscript and destroy what little fun I have had in solving the "most mysterious manuscript in the world". You may be interested to know that the New Yorker interviewed me about publishing an article in their magazine and when I had finished they agreed with me that it would be inappropriate to publish it at the present time. A good deal of the manuscript deals with sex physiology and relations in the middle ages. To me the Voynich manuscript was not written until the 16th century. I have published two papers on this idea which are enclosed in this letter. You have already referred to the one in Science. I have much more of the Voynich manuscript deciphered but shall probably never publish anything further on it due to the fact that the original manuscript and the photostatic copies are in as deep freeze as any section of Zeta which is a characteristic of some of our educational institutions. It was even suggested by one of our top cryptographers in Washington that since they had the mechanical machine to do the entire decipherment all they needed was my system of decoding which I had obtained by hard work. This I was loath to do and so the matter rests. As a matter of fact even if further decipherment of the Voynich manuscript could be made available it probably could not be published at the present time. To me the Voynich manuscript is merely another manuscript in the history of medicine. If the manuscript is undecipherable it may be worth all the owners expect to get for it. If the ciphering were known, and I certainly did decipher it, the manuscript would only be another in the history of medicine. It is my firm conviction that some of the material in the manuscript could not be published now, it could even be called a Kinsey report from the 17th century. However, news is news and you know that field a lot more than I do. Dear Dr. Strong, I recently was able to find your paper on the Voynich Manuscript in Science (15 Jun 1945) from a citation in The Codebreakers, by David Kahn. The description of your results was very interesting (but tantalizing) to me. Have you published the keys you used in the "double system of arithmetical progressions of multiple alphabets"? I have a copy of the microfilm from the British Museum with the first 67 pages of the manuscript, but have made no progress with it. I would be interested to see your method; I am particularly mystified that a progressive multiple alphabet system could produce situations like the three contiguous repetitions of the work 40HC89 in the plate on p. 865 of The Codebreakers. I hope this request is not an imposition on your time. At one time, I had the intention of publishing the complete analysis of the decoding of the Voynich manuscript. But after the insulting report of the early work by David Kahn, based upon the sloppy work of Friedman, I decided never to publish further on the research. Neither Kahn nor Friedman have ever seen my original analysis, including work sheets and for them to draw a conclusion without knowing all the evidence is unsound science and should be considered unethical practice in crypto-analysis. Friedman, in his correspondence to me admitted he was unable to decypher the Voynich MMS himself, and thus expressed a vane of vanity which probably was part of the reason why he tried to discredit me. Some build up a reputation by trying to destroy everyone else. I was never able to find out whether Ascham ever had the idea that his MMS would ever be decyphered. But if Ascham waited for four hundred years before his code system was discovered, I can wait just as long for recognition in finding Ashcham's reason. If you continue p. 865 you may find more repetitions of what you call "the word 40HC89". You may conclude that this combination is not even a single word and the combination may have different meanings. In other words it is not a unit of words but a unit for the entire passage. That is as far as I will go in indicating my system. My description of the system of decoding used is clear. But even without this clear hint, any expert decoder should be a master in his own field. Thank you also for clarifying your position with respect to Kahn and Friedman (who died several years ago, I believe). I certainly agree that Friedman's rejection of your solution was sloppy and unscientific - a clear cryptographic method with few degrees of freedom (unlike Newbold's attempt) would certainly overshadow any linguistic objections. The correct conclusion for him to have drawn was merely that your solution was unproven, since the essence of science is reproducibility of experiments. I must respectfully disagree with your inclusion of Kahn in the same category, however. I didn't fee that his treatment of your work was insulting, but that he had drawn the only conclusion possible - that it was unproven (because unpublished). He reports Friedman's opinion as opinion, and does not express his own opinion. In his chapter about Friedman, by the way, he echoes your comment about Friedman building his reputation by tearing down others. It is a surprise to hear about some of my old work. Yes, I am interested in the manuscript even after I received some pretty rough treatment with the custodian for the former owner, Mr. Voynich. As you may know there had been several copies made and deposited in various libraries. The one at the New York Library could only be seen by the permission of the custodian. She denied my request. Colonel Friedman of our USA code division also had access to a copy. With this, he had the audacity to ask me for my system of decipherment since he had the wonderful machines in Washington for decypherment. Hence I then determined that if the machines were as good as they were claimed to be, one should determine what system had been employed and I would be holding a ?climbing? throttle! I shall never divulge the system i used. I carefully described it in the Science article. you can find the cypher in Trithemius. I am certain that Anthony Ascham was the author. I also have taken note that the manuscript is now at Yale University - but several years after I had determined the nature of the manuscript at the Medical School, Yale University where I spent many hours in the wonderful Cushing Library. I wish you all the luck in your search. I fondly remember the hours of ?scout? work I did before the light broke.