And of Greek rather than Arabic origin.
It is also to be noted that those passages where Constantinus’ medicine borders most closely upon magic are apt to be borrowed from, or at least credited to, Galen and Dioscorides. Neither Constantinus nor his Arabic authorities introduced most of these superstitious elements into medicine. In his work on degrees Constantinus repeats Galen’s story of the boy who fell into an epileptic fit whenever the suspended peony was removed from his neck.[3007] In the Viaticum[3008] he ascribes the suspension of a white dog’s hairs and the use of various other parts of animals for epileptics to Dioscorides, but they do not seem to be found in that author’s extant works. Water in which blacksmiths have quenched their irons is another remedy prescribed for various disorders upon the authority of Dioscorides and Galen.[3009] Theriac and terra sigillata are of course not forgotten. That there is a magnetic mountain on the shore of the Indian Ocean which draws all the iron nails out of passing ships, and that the magnet extracts arrows from wounds is stated on the authority of the Lapidary of Aristotle, a spurious work. Constantinus adds that Rufus says that the magnet comforts those afflicted with melancholy and removes their fears and suspicions.[3010] However, it is without citation of other authors that Constantinus states that the plant agnus castus will mortify lust if it is merely suspended over the sleeper.[3011]
Some signs of astrology and alchemy.
There is not a great deal of astrological medicine in the works of Constantinus Africanus. There are some allusions to the moon and dog-days,[3012] Galen being twice cited to the effect that epilepsy in a waxing moon is a very moist disease, while in a waning moon it is very cold. In a chapter of the Pantegni[3013] the relation of critical days to the course of the moon and also to the nature of number is discussed. In another passage of the same work[3014] we read that if other remedies fail in the case of a patient who cannot hold his water while in bed, he should eat the bladder of a river fish for eight days while the moon is waxing and waning and he will be freed from the complaint. But Hippocrates testifies that in old men the ailment is incurable. But the principal astrological passage that I have found in the works of Constantinus is that in De humana natura[3015] where he traces the formation of the child in the womb and the influence of the planets upon the successive months of the process, and explains why children born in the seventh or ninth month live while those born in the eighth month die. This passage was cited by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale.[3016] Belief in alchemy is suggested when Constantinus repeats the assertion of some book on stones that lead would be silver except for its smell, its softness, and its inability to endure fire.[3017]
Constantinus and the School of Salerno.
The relation of Constantinus Africanus to the School of Salerno has been the subject of much dispute and of divergent views. Some have held that Salerno’s medical importance practically began with him; others have tried to maintain for Salernitan medicine a Neo-Latin character quite distinct from Constantinus’ introduction of Arabic influence. From the fact that Constantinus passed from Salerno to Monte Cassino, where most, if not all, of his writing seems to have been done, it has been assumed that there was an intimate connection between the monks and the rise of a medical school at Salerno. On the other hand, Renzi and Rashdall have ridiculed the notion, declaring the distance and difficulty of communication between the two places to be an insurmountable difficulty. It must be remembered, however, that Constantinus himself both attended the archbishop of Salerno in a case of stomach trouble and sent a treatise on the subject to him afterwards. A strong personal influence by him upon the practice and still more upon the literature of Salernitan medicine is therefore not precluded, though his stay at Salerno may have been brief and his literary labor performed entirely at the monastery. In any case a Master John Afflacius, who is associated with other Salernitan writers in a compilation from their works, was a disciple of Constantinus and, as we are about to see, perhaps the author of some of the treatises which have been published under Constantinus’ name. It certainly would seem that Constantinus and his disciple have as good a right to be called Salernitan as most of the authors included in Renzi’s collection.
Liber aureus and John Afflacius.
In a medical manuscript which Henschel discovered at Breslau in 1837[3018] and which he regarded as a composition of the School of Salerno and dated in the twelfth century, he found in the case of two works compiled from various authors[3019] that the passages ascribed to a Master John Afflacius, who was described as “a disciple of Constantinus,”[3020] were identical with passages in the Liber aureus or De remediorum et aegritudinum cognitione published as a work of Constantinus in the Basel edition of 1536. He also identified a Liber urinarum attributed to the same John Afflacius, disciple of Constantinus, in the Breslau manuscript with the De urinis which follows the Liber aureus in the printed edition of Constantinus’ works. Thus either the pupil appropriated or completed and published the work of his master, or Constantinus had the same good fortune in having his own name attached to the compositions of his pupil[3021] as in the case of the writings of his Arabic predecessors.
Afflacius more superstitious than his master.
It may be further noted that the disciple seems to have been more superstitious than the master, for in one of the passages ascribed to Afflacius in the aforesaid compilation, after the correspondence with the Liber aureus has ceased, the text goes on to prescribe the suspension of goat’s horn over one’s head as a soporific and gives the following “prognostic of life or death.” Smear the forehead of the patient from ear to ear with musam eneam. “If he sleeps, he will live; but if not, he will die; and this has been tested in acute fevers.” Another method is to try if the patient’s urine will mix with the milk of a woman who is suckling a male child. If it will, he will live. Another procedure to induce sleep is then given, which consists in reading the first verse of the Gospel of John nine times over the patient’s head, placing beneath his head a missal or psalter and the names of the seven sleepers written on a scroll. This is not the first instance of such Christian magic that we have encountered in connection with the School of Salerno and we begin to suspect that it was rather characteristic. At any rate it was not uncommon in medieval medicine in general and was almost certainly introduced before Innocent III who in 1215 forbade ordeals and who frowned on other superstitious practices. Probably such Christian magic dates from a period before Arabic influence began to be felt. Thus again we have reason to doubt whether early medieval medicine or Salernitan medicine was less superstitious than Arabic medicine or than medieval medicine after the introduction of Arabic medicine. At least Constantinus Africanus who represents the introduction of translations from the Arabic is comparatively free from superstition.