- guages from his uncle, and in the course of time became
associated with the latter in the work of translating. Eventually he reached his uncle's high standard of scholarship, and the text of his translations was from that time forth accepted without any revision. The Caliph Moutaouakkel appointed him Court Physician, and the immediate successors of this Caliph retained him in the same position. His death occurred during the second half of the ninth century of the Christian era.
Hobeïch translated the "Oath of Hippocrates" and a large number of the more important of Galen's treatises. In addition, he left to posterity several original writings. Quotations from these are to be found in the works of Rhazes, of Ebn el Beithar, and of Serapion the Younger, and they reveal two important facts: first, that Hobeïch was an excellent practicing physician; and, second, that the Arabs had already at this comparatively early date begun to gather their medical information from other sources than the Greek treatises. The following drugs, for example, are described by Hobeïch in the quotations just mentioned, and yet they do not appear to have been known to the Greek medical writers: Turbith, Convolvulus of the Nile, Nux Vomica, Colocynth, Croton Tiglium, Aloes and Myrobolans.
Costa, the son of Luca, was a Christian Greek from Baalbek, in Syria. The dates of his birth and death are not known, but it is believed that he lived during the first half of the tenth century of the present era. He was an excellent Greek and Arabic scholar and was also familiar with the Syriac language. His translations were esteemed equal to those of Honein. After spending some time in Greece he settled in Irak, a province of Persia, and devoted himself to the translation of the books which he had brought with him from Greece. At a later period of his life he removed to Armenia, a country which lies to the north of Irak, between it and the Black Sea, and it was during his residence there that he wrote a number of treatises. It was in Armenia, also, so far as may be judged from the accounts which we possess, that his death took
