Wilhelm Schulthess (1855–1917) und die Schweizer Orthopädie seiner Zeit

title-page and the opening passages of the text, it proves to be an exemplar of al-Samarqandi's Al-Asbab wa-l-'alamat copied in 1099/1687. As other copies of this work and of al-Kirmani's commentary upon it are described in the alphabetical list, this one too should have been included. Ar. 120, also marked as neither used nor identified, comprises eight different essays in different hands on different types of paper of different sizes from different periods, some in Arabic and some in Persian, on a variety of topics. All this is surely worth noting; and it is difficult to see why the last item, a fragment on medical plants (and in Arabic) has not received a proper entry. Finally, the entries for MSS that are catalogued pose certain difficulties. The researcher is not provided with the incipit or explicit for the listed texts. Iskandar recognizes that this information is most useful and desirable, but explains that high printing costs prevented him from including it (p. vii; see also pp. 1-5 for samples of entries as the author originally hoped to prepare them). Be that as it may, earlier cataloguing efforts had already provided a provisional description of the UCLA Arabic medical MSS. Hence, further coverage of the same ground really should have been more complete. In lieu of citations of incipit and explicit, the compiler states, he will provide detailed descriptions of the MSS. These are, of course different kinds of information, and one does not replace the other. In any case, spot checks here and there again reveal difficulties. In the detailed entry on the Halbat al-kumayt, for example, one is advised that the text bears catchwords; but nothing is said about the far more important fact that these catchwords are sometimes wrong, or that the text as presently bound and foliated is in several places discontinuous. The marginalia are not "few", but numerous, and include (fol. 15 1r) an interesting multicoloured and labelled mechanical diagram. The owners' entries at the beginning of the text are noted and identified, while nothing is said of the mass of information at fols. 49r-SOv, where two pages originally left blank have been filled with later owners' entries, diagrams, comments, and so forth. On a relatively minor but potentially confusing point of detail, the use of the term "receipt" in the sense of"recipe" (Ar. 73.ii, 79.ii, 115, in the Index of Manuscripts, and elsewhere) is an …