[1562] Spec. nat., XVII, 22, 28, 29, 32, 36, 41, 42, 50, 148; XXI, 13, 20, 21, 39, 44, 47, 48, 54, 172.
[1563] Ibid., XXXI, 5.
[1564] Spec. hist., XXXII, 119.
[1565] Spec. nat., XXXI, 73.
[1566] HL XVIII, 517.
CHAPTER LVII
EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY MEDICINE: GILBERT OF ENGLAND AND WILLIAM OF ENGLAND
Representatives of thirteenth century medicine—Question of Gilbert’s date—Works ascribed to Gilbert—The Compendium medicinae—General character of his medicine—An estimate of it by a modern physician—Picturesque compounds—Empirica and an old wife’s remedy—Use of red for small-pox; occult virtue—Magical treatment of epilepsy—Poisons and snake-oil—Eye cures—Influence of the stars—The soul, number, and geometry; physiognomy—Astrological medicine in William of England’s De urina non visa—Other works by William of England or by other Williams.
Representatives of thirteenth century medicine.
Medical writers of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century are so numerous and their writings so similar, that it will be advisable to treat of only two or three of them as examples of the rest. At the close of the thirteenth century Peter of Abano and Arnald of Villanova were such important personalities and so addicted, the one to astrology, and the other to occult science, that we must devote an entire chapter to each. Of the writers before them it will perhaps be sufficient if we consider in some detail, first Gilbert of England, who seems to have flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century and who was much cited by the later medical writers; next, a brief but significant work in astrological medicine composed in 1219 by a William of England (or of Aragon?); and finally in a second chapter Petrus Hispanus, who terminated his brilliant career in 1277 as Pope John XXI, and to whose account of “the way of experience” we shall add briefly something concerning the similar discussion of medical experiment in John of St. Amand who seems to have written between 1262 and 1280.[1567]