MEDICAL CANNABIS IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME
ORIBASIUS.
Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris eruta, & nunc primum in medicinae studiosorum utilitatem aedita.
Paris, Simon de Colines, 1533.
[bound after:]
GALEN, Claudius. De sanitate tuenda, libri sex Thoma Linacro Anglo interprete. Paris, Claude Chevallon, 1538.
Two works bound together, 8vo; Galen: ff. [xii] [of xvi, lacking title page and three preliminary leaves], 95, [1 (blank)]; Oribasius: ff. 116; a very good copy; bound together in contemporary deer over boards, spine ends defective, abrasions to surface and extremities; Galen copiously annotated throughout in a contemporary hand, extensive contemporary annotations to front endpapers, ownership inscription to rear endleaf by a female owner ‘Paola Rayna di ?Chissolo’, dated 1738.
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Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris eruta, & nunc primum in medicinae studiosorum utilitatem aedita.
First edition of this commentary on Hippocrates, bound with a richly annotated copy of Galen’s works in the translation by Thomas Linacre.
Oribasius’s work, here edited by by Johannes Günther, who dedicated it to Francesco Vimercato, physician to Eleanor, Queen of France, preserves excerpts from older writers whose writings would have otherwise been lost, and has thus been extremely valuable to modern scholars. Among the preserved material is, for example, the earliest known description of a string figure, presented as the surgical sling Plinthios Brokhos by the Greek physician Heraklas. Ancient medical uses of cannabis are also described.
The copy of Galen bound here, though lacking four preliminary leaves, is uniquely interesting by virtue of the very many contemporary annotations to the text. Arranged as marginalia and interlinear notes, there are comments of a medical nature that suggest practical knowledge on the subject, as well as connections, citations, re-formulations of some major medical questions, personal considerations, perhaps lecture notes, textual corrections, references (Dürer’s De proportione, 1532; Martial), and French translations.
Adams O-269; Bayle I, 81; Bruni-Celli, Bibl. Hippocratica 327; Choulant 122; Durling, NLM 16th cent., 3407; Renouard 217; Schreiber 103; Wellcome I, 4644: ‘Les éditions anciennes des oeuvres d’Oribase sont fort rare’.
