336 NOTES

I. 15 Zuouor, says the best sort is Armenian; styptic, soporific etc.,
good for phlegmones etc.

:48 Ddeluiuum, or bedella, was the costly gum of a tree or shrub
described by Pliny XII. 35, which grew in Arabia, India etc. It
was so precious that a character in Plautus addresses the beloved
object as 'Bdellium'.

49 Hfammoniacum in Pliny XII. 107 is the gum resin of a tree
which grew in Africa near the temple of Jupiter Ammon. Gum—
ammoniaec and bdellium are ingredients in the modern formula of
the famous 'Plaster of Vigo'. See Dioscurides III. 84.

:so Aggregative pills were so called because they were supposed
to assemble and purge the humors; the formula is in M€su6.

:ïs: Arthritic pills, for the joints and for gout, had many ingre—
dients, aloes, agaric etc.

ï$ Powdered lapis lazuli was supposed to have sovereign virtues;
Burton says it must be washed fifty times before used". Matthiolus
of Siena (1500—1577) highly praises lapis lazuli for melancholia.

1553 Benedicta lazativa was a& compound of colchicum, euphorbium
etc., for purging the humors and secretions of tumors etc.; Roger
Bacon, On ihe Errors of Physicians, says that this compound should
be called 'accursed', rather than ^blessed.?

154 The Indian Electuary of M6su6, "for purging the pituita and
the other humors of all parts of the body', is prescribed by Vigo;
its extremely complex formula is given in part by Fournier, Transla—
tion of Vigo, p. 73.

:s Hamech was an Arabian physician whose confection, of vege—
table substances mixed with whey, was much in vogue in the
16th cent. "'as a solvent of the bilious, salty, and inflamed humors'.
It contained colocynth, agaric, senna, rhubarb, manna, thyme,
fennel and many other ingredients, each of which had its special
röle and destination. See Fournier, Vigo, p. 48. Burton, a cen—
tury later than Fracastorius, says: ^Most approve it, though
some inveigh bitterly against it"', and he gives a list of these which
includes the 16th cent. French physician, Fernelius.  The formula
is given, in a long list of similar confections, in Joannis Mesuae
(Mesu6) Damascenti opera, Venice, 1602. 'Uheodericus is prob—
ably Teoderico Borgnoni (1205—1298), whose Chirwrgia was first
published at Venice, 1498. According to Haeser, he is the earliest
writer in whom is found a description of the salivation due to mercu—
rial inunections in skin diseases.

ïs6Seribonius Largus was a Roman army doctor, who, about
48 A. p. wrote a collection of Prescriptions (Composi(iones Medica—
mentorum) derived from Alexandrian sources.

ï:?7In 1519, Ulrich von Hutten the theologian published, at
Mainz, his treatise De Guaiaci Medicina et Morbo Gallico, dedicated
to Cardinal Albert; i. e. about eleven years before Fracastorius
published the panegyric of guaiae which appears as Book III of
his poem SypliJs.  Hutten (1488—1523) had himself suffered from