Page:A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence.djvu/40

 (fF. 282 b-293 b) in the "Index to the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum, by E. J. L. Scott".

The English version of Knutsson's treatise was reprinted in London about 15 10 by Wynkyn de Worde, and about the same time an edition appeared, probably at Antwerp, from an unknown press. In 1536 it was printed afresh by Thomas Gybson of London. According to Hazlitt ("Second series of bibliographical collections, etc." p. 18) W. Griffith obtained permission to print an edition some thirty years later: "A spedy Remyde for the pestelence, by a bysshope of Denmarke. Licensed to W. Griffith in 1 569-70." Whether this proposed reprint was ever issued does not appear to be known.

But it was through Thomas Phaer, the celebrated translator of Vergil's Aeneid, that the influence of Knutsson's treatise on English medical practice received its greatest impulse. Phaer, whose earlier years were occupied with the practice of law, took up about 1539 the study of medicine. As one of the results of his new study he brought out in 1546 an English translation, entitled "The regyment of lyfe", of a French version of "Regimen sanitatis Salerni", a work which was regarded as a standard authority. To this version he appended a treatise on the pestilence, in which was embodied the substance of Knutsson's work. A number of editions of Phaer 's book were issued in the sixteenth century, whilst the part relating to the plague was republished in London as late as 1722. So long at least can we trace the influence of Knutsson's "litil boke".