Page:A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence.djvu/39

 150 years, has alone preserved his name from entire oblivion. The disease that had devastated Sweden from 1450 to 1455, and again in 1464 and 1465, had probably never entirely quitted the country in the interval between these visitations, and it was in anticipation of its breaking out with increased virulence that we may assume the author to have written his work about 1461-63.

As the text is available in this reproduction, it is unnecessary to dwell upon the causes assigned by Knutsson for the spread of the pestilence, or on the remedies which he recommended.

The various forms in which his work was circulated need to be briefly described before terminating this notice of his treatise. Several Latin editions were printed in the fifteenth century, lacking for the most part any indication of printer, place, or date. On typographical grounds they are assigned to Antwerp, Paris, etc. None of them are likely to be much, if at all, earlier than the English version printed by Machlinia. A versified form of the work appears in an edition of "Albertus Magnus de Virtutibus herbarum", which was printed about 1500.

The history of the English version is of greater interest. One of the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum is said to agree so closely in wording and spelling that it may actually have been the original from which the text was set up by Machlinia. This is the manuscript described as no. 2276-2 in Ayscough's Catalogue, and no.