NOTES 313

44 This Arabic word is spelt saphati p. 181, where it is said to be
the equivalent of achores.  Other variants, e. g., asaphati, assafati,
sahaphati (Vigo) of the original sa/afa, are used in this century.
Vigo, Practica Chirurgica 4A.1.6, says that it is an exanthema of
small and confluent eruptions localised on the forehead, neck and
face, especially near the nose, and is often a symptom of syphilis.
In the l6th and 17th centt., the term is used often and vaguely;
some writers define it as w«lcera manantia capitis, others as a kind
of ïmpetigo. But it seems to be localised always on the face or
scalp.

4 Leoniceno (1428—1524) published his LibelWus de Epidem^ia
quam vulgo Morbum Gallicum vocant at Venice, June 1497. He
was Professor of Medicine, first at Padua, then at Bologna and
Ferrara. At Ferrara he taught the famous Manardi (died 1536),
who also wrote on syphilis. In 1492 he published his essay De
Medicorum  Erroribus which  aroused bitter controversy. / His
Opera were published at Basle, 1532; the monograph on syphilis
appears in faesimile, with a translation, in Sudhoff and Singer,
The HEarliest Printed I^terature on Syphilis, Florence, 1925. He
was a follower of Hippocrates, and maintained that the latter knew
the malady French Sickness, though he gave it no name; what
Hippocrates described was, in the opinion of Richter, malaria.
Fracastorius, below p. 267, again raises the question of the identity
of syphilis and elephantiasis. For Leoniceno!s discovery of an
error in Avicenna, see note 89.

44 Bembo (1470—1547) was a famous Florentine who became
Cardinal in 1539. He was a literary dictator, &a patron of poets
and learned men, and protected the philosopher Pomponazzi when
he was persecuted for heresy. He continued the History of Venice
left unfinished by Navagero, wrote many Italian and Latin poems,
and was a champion of Italian rather than Latin for the language
of contemporary literature. For a time he was Librarian of S.
Mark's where the MS. of his poems is now shown among the most
precious treasures of the Library. For many years he was the chief
patron of Fracastorius who used to visit him at Padua in the decade
before 1529, at which date Bembo went to Venice. He was the
lover of Lucrezia Borgia and his letters to her, to Fracastorius and
others are extant. His grave is shown at Rome. Titian's fine por—
trait of him was painted in 1539.

47 This is the epidemic of 1510—1512.

45 By Scythia he means South Russia, the coasts of the Black
Sea, and in general the steppes inhabited by nomadic tribes. — See
p. 167, where he says that the Scythians are comparatively immune
from elephantiasis on account of their milk diet.

49 In the poem Syphilis, he describes in detail a pest which at—
tacked goats only.

so Mentagra, which was apparently obsolete in Italy in his day, is
an instance of the recrudescence of maladies here referred to, and he