Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/294

learned Christians and Jews constantly busy translating Arabic works into Latin. The most widely known member of the latter group was Michael Scotus (or Scottus), who at one time had been a teacher in the Medical School of Salerno. Among the books which he translated while he was at Palermo there were several of Aristotle's treatises, more particularly those which dealt with psychological topics and with natural history. Frederick not only did everything in his power to promote the work of translating, he also took pains to distribute copies of the Latin versions, when completed, among the universities of Western Europe. His son, Manfred, who succeeded him on the throne, seems to have been almost as much interested in the work as his father had been. It was from him, for example, that the University of Paris received a set of the Aristotle volumes in Latin. When Charles I., King of Naples (1265-1285 A. D.), conquered Sicily he manifested considerable interest in continuing the work of his predecessors, particularly as regards treatises relating to medicine. Among the translators whom he employed for this work was Farragut (in Arabic, Faradsch ben Salem), from Girgenti, a small town on the south coast of Sicily, about sixty miles from Palermo. In addition to several treatises of minor importance he translated into Latin the colossal work of Rhazes—the "Continens." Charles I. kept at his Court not only expert translators, but also skilled illuminators; and it was by them that the celebrated manuscript copy of this work which is to-day in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, was illustrated with miniatures, three of which are portraits of Farragut. This particular copy of the "Continens" was completed in 1282 A. D. Not a few of the translations made during this period, it should be stated, are now very difficult to understand. In the first, place, the Latin in which they are written is of the barbaric type (neo-Latin), something quite different from that employed by Cicero, Tacitus and other Roman authors of the classical period; and, in the next, it is not infrequently evident that the translator himself did not clearly apprehend the meaning of the original Arabic text. Despite all