On the Usefulness of the Parts, Vol. II

he thought it would be useful. Following this method, he transferred much from the books of Galen that are titled Peri chreias morion On the Use of the Parts into the twenty-second, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth books of his own collection. In very many places, the readings of the better codices are confirmed by Oribasius, and sometimes errors are corrected, as on p. 377, 7, 18; 378, 3; 461, 18; 492, 20.

Three centuries later, a certain Theophilus, whom they call a protospatharius chief of the sword-bearers, a Byzantine honorific and archiatrus chief physician, wrote a small book titled Peri tes tou anthropou kataskeues On the Construction of the Human Body (ed. Greenhill. Oxford 1842). This is, so to speak, a compendium of the great work of Galen, composed by the author in such a way that he confirmed his own sentiments regarding the structure of human members with the authority of the prince of physicians. Thus, he rendered his words sometimes intact, sometimes slightly changed. Following his footsteps, I was able to correct the text at times, as on p. 27, 24; 29, 7; 30, 15; 32, 9; 389, 1; 433, 27.

The Latin version, which Nicolaus Calaber, born in the city of Reggio, produced in the fourteenth century, offers little help for restoring the text. It exists in the Dresden codices Db 92 and 93, the Munich codex 26, and the Vatican 2380, in which it is inscribed thus: Galen’s [work] On the Use of the Parts, translated from Greek into Latin by Nicolaus of Reggio in Calabria, in the year of the Lord 1317, on the penultimate day of the month of March, of the fifteenth indiction. This interpretation was printed in the Latin editions of Galen from Pavia, the Giunta press, and others. I used the Lyon edition of 1538. Since Nicolaus performed the duty of an interpreter by rendering word for word, "adding, diminishing, or changing nothing," as he himself says, it is easy to see what he read in each place. However, he seems to have used a codex from Urbino that was neither older nor better; thus, in many places, he agrees with codices of a lower grade, and in few cases did he alone render the true reading. He departs slightly further from the tradition of our codices in Book I, ch. 12 near the end (p. 25, 2), where, after the words "it is easy to understand," he added: as for instance, a fever that is prolonged sufficiently extends for about 30 hours, and others with these are more prolonged, reaching up to 36 hours.