Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/281

 close observer and a physician who strove to make accurate diagnoses.

Cophon the Younger (about 1100 A. D.) was the author of two works: a treatise on anatomy which bore the title "Anatomia Porci," and one on the practice of medicine ("Practica"). The ancients, it is stated, selected a pig for purposes of anatomical study "because its internal organs present a very close resemblance to those of the human being." Both books are written in a clear and simple style.

John Platearius the Younger was the author of a work on internal medicine ("Practica Brevis") and also of one on the subject of urine ("Regulae Urinarum").

Archimathaeus wrote and published three treatises: one on "Urines," another on practical medicine ("Practica"), and the third on "The Demeanor which a Physician should Observe when he Visits a Sick Person" ("De Aventu Medici"). The latter treatise, says Neuburger, is "a mixture of piety, artlessness, and slyness; but it furnishes a capital picture of the carefully regulated behavior of the mediaeval physician at the patient's bedside, of the manner in which he conducted his examination of the case, and of his intercourse with the household as well as with the sick person."

In addition to the treatises referred to above,—treatises which are known to have been written by the authors to whom I have credited them,—the Collectio Salernitana contains several of which the authorship is not known. One of these, which bears the title "De Aegritudinum Curatione," is reputed to furnish a better account of the special pathology and therapeutics taught at the Medical School of Salerno during the height of its celebrity than is to be found in any of the other treatises. In one part of the book—that, namely, in which local affections are discussed—the anonymous author gives in succession the opinions held by the seven leading teachers of the school (Platearius II., Cophon II., Petronius, Afflacius, Bartholomaeus, Ferrarius and Trotula) with regard to each one of