Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 84.5

ANGLICUS GILBERTUS (c.1180–c.1250) Compendium medicine Gilberti Anglici tam morborum vniuersaliu[m] qua[m] particularium nondum medicis sed [et] cyrurgicis vtilissimum. In vico Mercuriali sub intersignio Angeli. 1510 First edition. [6], ccclxij [i.e. ccclxj] leaves. 21 cm.

[Uniform Title: Compendium medicinae] Gilbertus was an English physician of the Medieval period. He is known chiefly for his encyclopedic work the Compendium of Medicine, (Compendium Medicinae,) most probably written between 1230 and 1250. The work, running to seven books, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive encyclopedia of medical and surgical knowledge as it existed in his day. Gilbert does not claim to be the originator of most of the material in his book. He quotes extensively from Roger of Palma, and acknowledges that his work is indebted to Greek physicians including Galen, Hippocrates and Theophilus Philaretes, Arab physicians such as Averroes and Avicenna, as well as a number of the Salernitan Masters of Italy. The Compendium covers the full range of medicine and significantly also the surgical treatments in use at the time. His Compendium was published in print in 1510, and was reprinted again as late as 1608. First edition of “the earliest complete treatise on general medicine by an English author… [a] complete mirror of the medical science of its age” (Handerson p.17). It codifies 13th Century knowledge of general diseases, physiology, physiognomy, ophthalmology, laryngology, otology, gynecology, neurology, dermatology, embryology, obstetrics, dietetics, urinary and venereal diseases, therapeutics, toxicology, operative surgery, cosmetics and the hygiene of travel. “Gilbert was the first to recognize the contagious nature of smallpox” (Sarton) and the first Englishman to discuss gout. He gave the most important early account of measles, while his observations on leprosy formed the basis for nearly all subsequent medieval descriptions. It is significant that “the [fifty] surgical chapters of the Compendium present a more scientific and complete view of surgical art, as then known, than any contemporaneous writings of the Christian West, outside Italy”, making the author “the earliest representative of surgical teaching in England.” (Handerson). Recipes for depilatories, hair dyes, medicinal soaps and remedies for moles, wrinkles and facial blemishes complement the long chapter, De sophistication vulvae. He suggests a variety of medical uses for the magnet. Bruce McKittrick has traced no copy at auction for the last quarter century.

Cited references: Wellcome I #2832; Waller 3537; Cushing C258; NLM 16th C #2098

John Martin M.D. Endowment