Silvaticus—Sylvaticus—Matthæus Moretus, well-known Italian savant living in 1344, physician to the King of Naples, one of the professors at Salerno,[72] and author of “Matth. Silvatici, medic. de Salerno, Liber cibalis et Medicinalis Pandectarum ...” originally published at Naples, 1474. This work, dedicated to Ferdinand, King of Sicily, is an Encyclopædic Dictionary and one of the most important books we have of the history of medicine in the Middle Ages, and at beginning of the Italian Renaissance. The citations made by Græsse (“Trésor,” Vol. VI. p. 406), state that Silvaticus was the owner of a private botanical garden at Salerno (Chap. CXCVII. s.v. “Colcasia” of the Opus Pandectarum), and allude to Thos. Frognall Dibdin’s “Bibliotheca Spenceriana,” Vol. IV. London, 1815, pp. 24–25, and Van der Meersch, “Rech. sur les impr. Belges,” etc., Vol. I. pp. 384, etc.
References.—“Repertoire et sources historiques du Moyen Age,” par l’abbé Ulysse, Joseph Chevalier, Paris, 1877–1886, p. 2089; Argellati (Philippo), “Bibliotheca Mediolan.,” 1745; Tiraboschi (Girolamo), “Storia della Letteratura Italiana,” 1807, Vol. I. p. 275; Sbaralea (Joannes Hyacinthus), “Supplementum ... Scriptores ordinis,” 1806, p. 529; Tafuri (Giovanni Bernardino), “Scrittori ... di Napoli,” 1749, Vol. II. pp. 67–70; “Thesaur. Lit. Bot.,” 1851, p. 185; Brunet (Jacques Charles), “Manuel du Libraire,” 1864, Vol. V. pp. 387–388; Watt (Rob.), “Bibliotheca Britannica,” Edinburgh, 1824, Vol. II. p. 856 h; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XIV. p. 1308; Paul Lacroix, “Science and Literature of the Middle Ages,” p. 117; Ludovico Hain, “Repertorium Bibliographicorum,” Vol. II. part ii. Nos. 15192–15202, pp. 375–376; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Solinus, Caius Julius—Grammaticus—a Roman writer who lived in latter part of the second century, the author of a compilation in fifty-seven chapters which contains a sketch of the world as it was known to him, but which is supposed to have been taken entirely from Pliny’s “Natural History.” It was originally published under the title of “Collectanea rerum mirabilium,” the second edition being headed “Polyhistor.” This was one of the earliest known printed books, having first appeared at Venice in 1473, and it has since been translated into many foreign languages, notably during 1600, 1603, and 1847.
The most important of the three references Gilbert makes to Solinus is found in De Magnete, Book II. chap. xxxviii., where it is said that Pliny and Julius Solinus tell of the stone cathochites, affirming that it attracts flesh and that it holds one’s hand, as loadstone holds iron and amber holds chaff. But that, says he, is due solely to its viscosity and its natural glutinousness, for it adheres most readily to a warm hand.
References.—Dodwell (Henry, the elder), “Dissertationes Cyprianicæ”; Moller (D. W.); C. J. Solino, in “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XLIV. pp. 153–154; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXX. p. 232.
Thebit Ben-Kora—Thabit Ibn Corrah—Abū Thabit Ibn Kurrah—Tebioth ben Chorezen (Houzeau, No. 1130), one of the most brilliant and accomplished scholars produced by the Arabs (836–901), called by Delambre “Le Ronsard de l’Astronomie,” is the author of many treatises on mathematics, and on other scientific subjects, the mention of the titles of which take up nearly two folio pages of Casiri’s “Catalogue.” Especially is he shown in latter as having translated into Arabic the chief works of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and Ptolemy also the Physics and Analytics of Aristotle and many of the works of Hippocrates and Galen.
Incidentally it may be added that geometry, to which Thebit Ben-Kora gave particular attention, was named by the Arabs handassah, and that the Tahrir Hendassiat contains: the explication, the data and the optics, of Euclid, the syntaxis magna of Ptolemy, the spherics of Theodosius and his book concerning night and day, the spherics of Menelaus, the movable sphere of Autolycus, the ascendants or horoscopes of Asclepius, a treatise of Aristarchus on the discs of the sun and moon, the lemmas or theorems of Archimedes, also his treatise on the sphere and cylinder, the conics of Apollonius and Thebit Ben-Kora, a treatise of Theodosius on the positions, or quiescence, of bodies, etc., etc. (D’Herbelot, art. Handassah, and Aklides. See also, for origin of geometry, etc. “A Short History of Greek Mathem.,” Jas. Gow, Cambridge, 1884, pp. 123–134.)
The allusions by Gilbert are to be found, Book III. chap. i., and Book VI. chap. ix. of De Magnete, in which latter it is said that, Thebitius, in order to establish a law for the great inequalities in the movements of the stars, held that the eighth sphere does not advance by continued motion from west to east, but that it has a sort of tremulous motion, “a movement of trepidation.”
References.—“Hist. de la Médecine Arabe,” par Dr. Lucien Leclerc, Paris, 1876, Vol. I. pp. 168–172; Dreyer (J.), “Tycho Brahe,” 1890, pp. 354–356; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 466–467, 702; “History of Mathematics,” Walter W. Rouse Ball, London, 1888, p. 153; “Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik,” Vol. VI, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 25–26.
Themistius of Paphlagonia—surnamed Euphrades—was a distinguished Greek orator and writer (about 315–390), whose philosophical works consist of commentaries in the form of paraphrases on some of Aristotle’s writings, one being upon the work “On Heaven,” and the other upon the twelfth book of the “Metaphysics.” The paraphrases were first published by Hermolaus Barbarus in 1481. Gilbert’s only reference is briefly made in De Magnete, Book II. chap. iv.