The Canon of Medicine (1522) - Page 20

...and salt meat, and gross meat, and the flesh of donkeys, and lentils. All these words of Avicenna, however barbarously they are written, are nevertheless taken from Galen in the chapter on elephantiasis. What if Galen had not understood by elephantiasis the disease we mentioned? That absurdity would follow: that Galen, easily the prince of physicians, who wrote so many volumes on medicine so carefully and so copiously, made no mention in his books of that disease which surpasses all others in magnitude, which we commonly call lepra. By Galen's books, however, I understand those which the same author left written in his own language. For in those which we have translated from either the Greek or the Arabic language, there is much ambiguity in this word lepra. Because sometimes the translator, when he found elephantiasis written in the Greek Galenic codex, interpreted it as lepra; where he found lepra, he changed nothing, but used the same word, although among the Greek authors, lepra is one disease and elephantiasis is another. For lepra (as Galen says in the book on tumors against nature) is a passion of the skin alone, which cannot be said of elephantiasis. Since in that disease which is named elephantiasis by the Greeks, not only the skin but also the flesh, and even the bones—as Cornelius Celsus also testifies—are often corrupted. The name elephantiasis is drawn from the likeness to an elephant, because (as Galen says in the sixth book on the causes of accidents) those who labor under this disease have black flesh and skin full of tubercles, such as the skin of elephants. Some think elephantiasis is so called because of the magnitude of the disease, which yields to almost no remedy. Some think it is so named because, just as an elephant lives the longest of all animals, so this disease is the longest lasting; all of which properties suit no other disease more than that which we commonly call lepra. Avicenna treats of elephantiasis in the third book; he deals with lepra in the fourth, with such an interval that he seems to have thought elephantiasis a genus entirely distinct from lepra, especially since the same Avicenna placed elephantiasis not among the diseases of figure, as Galen did, but in the first book, [as a disease] of quantity.

Concerning this word "Chironia" in Avicenna. Doubt XIV.

Let us correct in Avicenna, as if in passing, the most ignorant word "Charonia," which word, since it is futile and means nothing, you shall substitute "Chironia" for it. Moreover (as Beroaldus of Bologna says), Chironia are incurable ulcers, not so called because Chiron healed them, but because he suffered from them. Chiron was indeed most excellent in medicine, in that he discovered herbalism and the art of medicine, from whom the herbs Centaurium Centaury and Chironium are named. Once, when he had received Hercules into his hospitality and was handling the Herculean arms, an arrow fell onto his foot, from which wound an incurable ulcer was made, and thus he met his death. Whence the proverb "Chironian ulcer" for incurable ulcers. Plinius Pliny the Elder in book XXV claims that Chiron recovered from that wound of the Herculean arrow, and was cured by the herb centaury, which some for this reason called Chironium. Ovid in the Fasti remembers that Chiron perished from the blow of an arrow, which was

infected with the blood of the Lernaean Hydra, and thus, being received into heaven, became the Archer the constellation Sagittarius; and therein he remembers this history in these verses: "While the old man handles the weapons stained with poisons, it slips, and the arrow is fixed in his left foot. Chiron groaned and drew the iron from his body, and Alcides Hercules groans, and the Haemonian boy."

Concerning Lutum sigillatum, which in the codices of Galen is called Terra sigillata. Doubt the Fifteenth.

A woodcut decorative initial 'E' depicts a scholar seated at a desk within an arched room.
Let us also explain what Lutum sigillatum sealed clay is in the same Avicenna, of which there is such frequent mention among physicians, such manifold use in medicines, and such an efficacious force in antidotes, which is held to be such a notable thing in medicine. Know, therefore, that it is a certain species of red earth, which they call Terra Lemnia Lemnian earth, close to the color of vermilion. This was born on the island of Lemnos, whence it also takes its name, and was much celebrated by the ancients, as Plinius says in book XXXV. This was not sold except sealed; whence they also called it sphragis seal, whether meaning a seal or a signet. Hence the translator of Avicenna translated it as Lutum sigillatum, and the translator of Galen as Terra sigillata, not very happily. But why Plinius says that this sealed Lemnian red earth was customarily sold, it will not be beside the point to explain this more fully, so that I may bring aid to three writers equally—Galen, Avicenna, and Plinius—at one stroke, and pour light into dark places. On the island of Lemnos, the priestess of Diana reverently carries the red earth, poured out from a certain cave, into the city after the sacrifices have been performed; and, making it greasy and clay-like by mixing water, where it is diligently prepared, she seals it with the sacred wood of Diana, and soon it is sold in this way. Dioscorides relates in the fifth book that Lemnian earth is mixed with goat’s blood, and is sealed with the image of a goat, and for that reason is called sphragis. Galen, in the ninth book of Simples, remembers that he sailed to the island of Lemnos for the sake of knowing this sphragis; in which matter he followed the footsteps of the great philosophers who, for the sake of learning, traversed the globe of the earth and penetrated into the most remote and most unknown nations. Just as in ancient times Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato sailed to learn magic, having undertaken travels, which they preached upon returning and kept among their secrets. Similarly, that Apollonius Tyaneus approached the Gymnosophists naked philosophers, the philosophers of the Indians and Ethiopians, and the priests of the Egyptians, and looked upon them and conversed with them. For, as Seneca says most truthfully, a man must learn as long as he is ignorant, or rather as long as he lives, and as the muses of the Greeks sing: "Nothing is sweeter than to have known all things." For men by nature desire to know, and are insatiable in learning, not so much great things as new things. Galen, therefore, being—as everyone knows—most learned and a polymath, that is, knowing many things, and being particularly curious about things pertaining to medicine, deservedly decided to visit Lemnos, so that what he had learned from "silent teachers" (as they say), he might see in person and contemplate the sphragis, that is, the sealed Lemnian red earth, whose effects in medicine are miraculous. "Lennon phragis" for "Lemnia sphragis" is almost always read erroneously in the same author.