Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 103

MATTHAEUS SILVATICUS (d. ca. 1342) Liber pandectarum medicinae. Octaviani Scoti per Bonetum Locatellum 1498] 181 [1] ll. 29 cm.

As medicine began to emerge from the dark ages, the medieval student was confronted with an amazing variety of new words. Many of these words were of Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, or Syriac origin and the medical student was especially interested in mastering the meaning and composition of the new drugs whose uses were important in his practice. Thus it is not surprising to find that dictionaries were among the first books to be printed. Silvaticus, a Mantuan physician, lived during the fourteenth century and prepared this dictionary which first appeared in printed form in the early 1470s. Arranged in alphabetical order, his dictionary is mainly a treatise on Arabic drugs. Special sections, sometimes covering several pages, are devoted to the more important drugs. In the longer entries, the Latinized form of the Arabic word is followed by its Latin and Greek equivalents. A description of the drug is given and its uses by such authorities as Avicenna, Mesuë, Serapion, Galen, and Dioscorides are provided. Freind, in his History of physick, Vol. II, p. 265 (see No. 778) says "either through the fault of the original Writer or the Transcribers, that there is scarce any understanding it; there being hardly one line, where there is not a barbarous or unintelligible expression: so that there wants another Dictionary to explain his meaning." Nevertheless, the work was popular and by 1498 had already gone through eight editions. In the present edition, for the first time, the editor, Georgius de Ferrariis, has incorporated the Synonyma medicinae of Simon Genuensis (fl. 1285). Simon (or Simon of Geneva) was physician to Pope Nicholas IV and prepared his dictionary of the materia medica after many years of travel and study in the late thirteenth century.

See Related Record(s): 778

Cited references: Durling 4205 (1507 ed.); Goff S 517; Hain 15202; Klebs 919.9; Waller 143 (1580 ed.); Wellcome 5970 (1480 ed.)

Gift of John Martin, M.D.