Prognostica Galieni.

THE collection of manuscripts of the ancient medical writers that was made under the guidance of Hermann Diels was a model of scholarly co-operation and remains a basic tool of the investigator of the transmission of ancient science to the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance.' However, its failings are well known: there is confusion between works of similar title and subject, a slackness in noting leaf numbers and exact divisions within the manuscript, and a disregard of the anonymous or pseudonymous literature in circulation.2 Reliance upon catalogues, often without personal inspection by a member of the commission, led to the perpetuation of certain errors to serve as snares for the unwary. One of the treasures of St. John's College, Oxford, is a medieval scientific manuscript, MS. 17, which is said in Diels' catalogue to contain a Latin text of the Galenic tract, 'On Prognosis, for Epigenes'.3 H. 0. Coxe in his pioneering catalogue of Oxford manuscripts described this as a manuscript of Prognostica Galieni, which is indeed the title of the section beginning at fol. 2 verso, col. 1, line 26.' Kluge, who excerpted this for Diels without further investigation, confused this translation with that of Niccolo da Reggio, and his ascription and Coxe's dating passed incongruously into the catalogue. C. W. Jones, in a manuscript note in the copy of Coxe's catalogue preserved in St. John's library, dated the majority of this manuscript to the period 1083-1085, with additions of a slightly later date, circa 1101, and suggested that it came from the abbey of Thorney. Thus, even if this work were a translation of Galen's 'On prognosis', it could in no way be connected with the work of the fourteenth-century scholar, Niccolo.5 There is no evidence for knowledge of this particular Galenic tract in the West until NiccohYs translation, although it may have been translated into Syriac and, although early translations of certain Galenic texts are known by Hunain ibn Ishaq,6, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that this work cannot be what Diels' catalogue claims for it.7 Much of the medical learning of this manuscript was transcribed and published by Charles Singer in a long article on early English medicine, and I repeat most of his version.8