Reappraisals in Renaissance thought

completion, and when the project is complete it should comprise nineteen volumes in all. This volume is an edition of Arnald's Tractatus de consideracionibus operis medicine siveflebotomia. It contains a detailed introductory essay (in Spanish) by Pedro Gil-Sotres together with the text of Arnald's treatise on phlebotomy edited by Luke Demaitre. The volume is complete with bibliography and indices. Gil-Sotres's excellent introduction begins with a detailed analysis of the nature of phlebotomy in terms of both its theory and practice (pp. 9-47). Here he outlines the theoretical assumptions derived from Galenic and Arabic sources that lay behind the art of blood-letting. In particular, he discusses the actions of derivation (the practice of withdrawing corrupt humours directly from the affected part of the body) and revulsion (the practice of reducing corrupt humours in one part of the body by acting upon another part). In his section on the indications and contra-indications of phlebotomy, Gil-Sotres examines the particular circumstances in which blood-letting is called for, together with their natural, non-natural and contra-natural causes. A detailed account of blood-letting is then given, including descriptions of the necessary preliminaries to blood-letting, the method of locating the vein, the art of incision, the different forms of phlebotomy, the quantity of blood to be let, complications that could occur, and the special care that had to be taken of a patient who had just been phlebotomized. The second part of Gil-Sotres's introduction is given over to an analysis of the Tractatus de consideracionibus operis medicine itself (pp. 48-83). Here he discusses the date of the work, the occasion for its composition, and its sources. He examines the contents of the treatise from four perspectives. He views it, in turn, as an introduction to therapeutics, as a work on phlebotomy, and (probably most interesting of all) as an anti-Averroist medical text. He also argues that it can be interpreted as a polemic reflecting the author's part in at least three different disputes concerning the action of air on the humours, the treatment of pain, and the quantification of the amount of blood to be let. Gil-Sotres concludes his essay with an analysis of the discussions on phlebotomy to be found in Arnald's other writings (pp. 83-120), including the Parabola and the treatise De simplicibus. Under this heading he also includes works more doubtfully attributed to Arnald such as the short work entitled Omni tempore and the text …