Albandinus.
Two other manuscripts at Paris[2861] contain under the name of Albandinus a “book of similitudes of the sons of Adam, fortunate and unfortunate, of life or death, according to nations, that is, their nativities according to the twelve signs.” The treatise opens with a method of calculating a person’s nativity from the letters in his own and his mother’s name similar to that which occurs in the course of the Mathematica Alhandrei, but then applies it directly to the twelve signs rather than to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It also does not bother with the Hebrew alphabet but gives numerical equivalents directly for the Latin letters. Some treatise by Albandinus on sickness and the signs in a manuscript at Munich[2862] is perhaps identical with the foregoing.
Geomancy of Alkardianus or Alchandiandus.
To an Alkardianus or Alchandiandus is ascribed a geomancy,[2863] and since it also is arranged according to the twenty-eight divisions of the zodiac with 28 judges and 28 chapters each consisting of 28 lines in answer to as many questions, it would seem almost certain that it is by the same author who treated of the influences of the 28 houses or facies of the twelve signs upon those born under them. Moreover, this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus states in his preface that he has composed certain books on the dispositions of the signs and the courses of the planets and on prediction of the future from them. “But since moderns always rejoice in brevity,” he has added this handy and rapid geomantic means of answering questions and ascertaining the decrees of the stars. The 28 tables of 28 lines each of this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus are identical with one of the two such sets[2864] commonly included in the Experimentarius[2865] of Bernard Silvester, a work of geomancy which he is said to have translated from the Arabic.[2866] He lived in the twelfth century and will be the subject of one of our later chapters.
An anonymous treatise or fragment of the tenth century.
It still remains to speak of a portion of our tenth century manuscript at Paris which begins, after the book of Alchandrus seems to have concluded, with the words, “Quicunque nosse desiderat legem astrorum....”[2867] This Incipit is so similar to that of the twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe, “Quicumque astronomiam peritiam disciplinae ...” and to that of the four books of astronomy, “Quicumque mundane spere rationem et astrorum,” that one is tempted to imply some relation between them, and, in view of the tenth century date of the one at present in question, to connect it like the others with the name of Gerbert. Our present treatise or fragment of a treatise is largely astrological in character, “following for the present the wisdom of the mathematici who think that mundane affairs are carried on under the rule of the constellations.” This refusal to accept personal responsibility for astrological doctrine is similar to the attitude of the author of the four books of astronomy, so that perhaps the present text is the missing fragment required to fulfil his promise to treat of the subject of prognostication in later chapters. If so it indulges in some repetition, as it goes into the relations existing between signs, planets, and elements, and gives the “Saracen” names[2868] for the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It includes a way to detect theft for each planet and a method of determining if a patient will recover by computation of the numerical value of the letters in his name. These features are suggestive of the Mathematical of Alchandrus.
CHAPTER XXXI
ANGLO-SAXON, SALERNITAN, AND OTHER LATIN MEDICINE IN MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE NINTH TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY
Plan of this chapter—Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine—Leech-Book of Bald and Cild—Magical procedure and incantations—A superstitious compound—Summary—Cauterization—Treatment of demoniacs—Incantations and characters—In a twelfth century manuscript—Magic with a split hazel rod—More incantations and the virtues of a vulture—Lots of the saints—Superstitious veterinary and medical practice—Two Paris manuscripts—Blood-letting—Resemblances to Egerton 821—Virtues of blood—Pious incantations and magical procedure—More superstitious veterinary practice—The School of Salerno—Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?—The Practica of Petrocellus—Its sources—Fourfold origin of medicine—Therapeutics of Petrocellus—The Regimen Salernitanum—Its superstition—The Practica of Archimatthaeus—A Salernitan treatise of about 1200—The wives of Salerno.
Plan of this chapter.
In this chapter our purpose is to treat of early medieval medicine as distinct on the one hand from post-classical medicine, to which we have already devoted a chapter, and on the other hand from later medieval medicine as affected by translations from the Arabic and other oriental influence. Perhaps one of the outcomes of our discussion will be to suggest that any such distinctions cannot be at all sharply or chronologically drawn. However, the writings which we shall discuss now are contained mainly in manuscripts dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, although some of them may have been first composed at an earlier date than that of the manuscript in which they chance to be preserved. Some are in Anglo-Saxon; more, in Latin. Some it has been customary to classify under the caption of Salernitan. We shall postpone until the next chapter our consideration of Constantinus Africanus, although the dates of his life fall within the eleventh century, because he already at that early date represents the introduction of Arabic medicine to the western world.