This top to toe order, taking up one ailment after another and listing remedies in connection with each, was already common[1631] and is generally followed with some variations in the manuscripts. The 1497 preface also states that the work is divided into four books, but this division is neither promised nor performed in most of the manuscripts. Two seem to go no farther than where the third book ends in the 1497 edition, and two others give the first few chapters of its fourth book as a separate treatise on fevers.[1632] Indeed the colophon to the 1497 edition states that Peter’s treatise on fevers has been added to the Thesaurus pauperum. In the 1578 edition instead of four books we find simply eighty-five headings representing as many diseases. Some manuscripts also have tables of contents. Royal 12 B III gives but fifty-two headings, ending with quartan fever, while Additional MS. 32,622 and Harleian MS. 5218 sometimes have more and sometimes fewer headings than the 1497 text, which has 21, 18, 19, and 20 chapters respectively in its four books. The other manuscripts which I have seen have to a considerable extent the same headings, and still more so the same matter, but the order varies somewhat.
Emphasis on occult virtue.
Returning to the preface, we may note that the author counsels the reader not to despise what he reads because it is unfamiliar to him, and also not to apply the remedies before carefully considering the nature of the disease and the condition of the patient. “And let him study diligently to learn the natures and constitutions and substances of things, and as far as he can the occult virtue of particular things.”[1633] Otherwise it will be a case of blind leading blind. We have already seen that in addition to this profession of belief in occult virtue of particular objects some manuscripts, though hardly the oldest or most reliable ones, assert further that ligatures are not superstitious but act directly, especially if a right foot is bound on the right foot, or a male animal on a man.
Authority and experiment.
The preface also informs us of the sources whence the work has been compiled. These are “the books of the ancient philosophers and masters and of modern experimenters.” The author has tried either to present their views in their own words, or to express their precise meaning in other words of easier comprehension, so that if you had their books at hand you would find nothing other than what he sets down here, and so that in perusing his book you may seem to read the originals. The mention of “modern experimenters” is a foretaste of the “experimental” character of the Thesaurus pauperum. In some manuscripts it is called a Book of Experiments or a Summa of medicinal experiments, and it is sometimes included in collections of expressly experimental works. One reason for this is the common medieval use of the word “experimentum” for almost any medicinal recipe or remedy, but another reason is that Peter’s remedies are rather empirical in character. And as early as Galen’s time the Empirics relied partly for their experiences upon the statements of past authors. Moreover, we meet throughout the Thesaurus pauperum with assurances that this or that has been experienced, or that experts or “Experimenter” have said so, or even that “I have experienced this.”[1634] These uses of the first person are often probably copied from Peter’s authorities, but they later came to be regarded as his own experiences, since the 1578 edition describes the Thesaurus pauperum in the full title as “an empirical work from all sorts of authors and his own experience.”
Some of his authorities.
Among his authorities Peter makes much use of recent works and writers, such as Constantinus Africanus and Platearius and the Antidotarium of Nicholaus, Walter and Richard and Roger, Experimentator and Lapidarius and Liber de natura rerum, Gilbert of England and Albertus Magnus. He of course utilizes such Hebrew and Arabic medical writers as Isaac, Rasis, Haly, and Avicenna. It is worth noting as a hint of the superstitious character of parts of his work that he cites the Kiranides a good deal. Galen and “Dyascorides”—often pseudo, Pliny and Esculapius, are of course not forgotten.
Parts of animals: suspensions.
Much use is made of parts of animals, and perhaps especially of those least to be mentioned. Less nauseating examples are, among many similar parts of animals prescribed for epileptics, the liver of a vulture drunk with its blood for nine days, or the gall still warm from a dog who should have been killed the moment the epileptic fell in the fit. This last is borrowed from Gilbert. Portions of the human body, too, are employed; for instance, burnt human bones or the tooth of a dead man. Suspensions from the neck of such objects as the hairs of a dog or a cabbage root are also in favor.[1635]
Remedies for toothache.