REVIVAL OF GREEK MEDICINE 17
The mediaeval world was thus in a sense possessed of the chief Greek medical writers ; and, if this was so, one asks why Linacre and the humanists thought they were rendering such an important service to medicine in re-translating Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates from the original Greek. The fact was that the doubly translated versions of the Greek classics had, as might be expected from their history, many defects. Their style was considered barbarous, and, from the ignorance of the translators,
of Alexandria in the time of Trajan. His works have survived only in fragments, and must have been very imperfectly known in the Middle Ages. Hippocras and Galien require no comment-. Hali was probably Haly Abbas, an Arabian writer whose work, called Liber Regius or The King’s Book, was in a Latin version very popular. But there was another Haly, Haly Rodoan, whose commentaries on Galen were translated into Latin and read in the Universities. Serapion was the name of two Arabian physicians, an older and a younger. The former wrote a work on Therapeutics, called Breviarium, translated by Gerard of Cremona ; the latter a treatise on Simple Medicines , which was the foundation of many later works of the same kind. They were very likely confounded. Rasis and Avicenna, as the most celebrated of the Arabian physicians, require no explanation. Averroes, one of the latest Arab physicians in Spain, is best known as a philosopher and exponent of Aristotle, but his medical work, called the Colliget, was also popular in the Middle Ages and frequently printed in later times. Damascene means ‘ Janus Damascenus,’ under whose name appear certain treatises now ascribed to the older Serapion or to Mesua. But the Middle Ages doubtless regarded
him as a distinct author, and a small collection of Medical Aphorisms with his name appears to have been a popular book. Constantin was Constantinus Africanus, referred to elsewhere as the earliest translator of Arabic medical works into Latin. But he also brought out works in his own name, of which the Arabic origin was very imperfectly acknow- ledged, especially the well-known Pantegnum or Pantegni. Bernard is Bernard of Gordon, a Frenchman, Professor of Medicine at Montpdlier, stated by Haeser (but without autho- rity) to have been a Scot. His work, the Lilium Medicinae , was written in 1307. Gatisden is John of Gaddesden, the well-known Eng- lish physician of the fourteenth century, author of the Rosa Anglica, a handbook of medicine. He might have been almost or quite a con- temporary of Chaucer. Gilbertin means Gilbertus Anglicus, the earliest medical writer of English name. He was in the Crusades with Richard Cceur de Lion, and wrote a Com- pendium Medicinae, which was largely borrowed from by Gordon and Gaddesden. The whole list is very curious, showing, if it is to be taken literally, that the Doctor of Physic was a man of wide reading ; or, at least, that Chaucer’s own know- ledge of such literature was, for a layman, not inconsiderable.
B
