Doctor Bernard de Gordon: professor and practitioner

ascribed in the later of its two MSS. to Bartolomeo de Varignana and accepted as such by Dr. Siraisi (cf. also Isis 1977, pp. 33-39). In the list taken from its preface and printed as Appendix 2, the commentator describes Galen's method of dividing up the art of medicine, illustrating it with examples of individual treatises. Since he expressly notes where a tract no longer survives, it is fair to assume that he knows of the others. Almost all his examples come from early versions-there is no certain use of Pietro d'Abano's contemporary translations from the Greek,-and it is thus surprising to find a reference to the very rare De disnia (Kuhn VIl, 753-960). This was not translated into Latin before Niccolo in 1345, and if this is the book cited by the commentator, he cannot be Bartolomeo, who died c. 1321, and Dr. Siraisi's arguments from this treatise (cf. p. 449) collapse. But there is one further possibility, that the author gained his knowledge of De disnia from cross-references within Galen. But with one exception, they were either unknown in the medieval West or not translated before Niccol6 (so De diebus creticis, Wellcome, MS. 286, fol. 77r or were given in another form (De malo anhelitu, De inspiratione [as in Pietro's version of De marasmo, Galen, Opera, 1490, sig. tt.iira], De mutatione anhelitus). However, in the version of De locis affectis that begins "Loca nominant" allusions to the work are in the form "De dipsnia/disnia" (e.g. Wellcome, MS. 286, fols. 101 ra, 104ra, 106ra 107v'). This version was known to Taddeo (and hence cannot be, as the Wellcome colophon says, by Niccolo), for he used it as the control in the MS. discussed by Dr. Siraisi on p. 102. It is just possible that the commentator derived enough information from these references to include it in his list, but since he may refer to at least two other versions by Niccolo, I prefer to jettison the evidence of a single late colophon and consider that the author, at least of the preface, had read De disnia after 1345 and that he was not Bartolomeo. Even if we discount this commentary, Dr. Siraisi's study is both challenging and informative. Her first book told us a great deal about medieval Padua: her second has performed an even better service for Padua's greatest Italian medical rival. Vivian Nutton Wellcome Institute