Hebrew translation of Gentile da Foligno’s medical manual; Sefer tsirurgia (On Surgery, Hebrew version of Dino del Garbo, De emplastris et unguentis); Mavo be-melakhah (Introduction to the Medical Practice, Hebrew translation of Bernardus Alberti, Introductorium in practicam pro provectis in theorica, by Abraham Avigdor); Mafteah ha-sodot (Medical Prescriptions)

Hebrew translation of Gentile da Foligno’s medical manual; Sefer tsirurgia (On Surgery, Hebrew version of Dino del Garbo, De emplastris et unguentis); Mavo be-melakhah (Introduction to the Medical Practice, Hebrew translation of Bernardus Alberti, Introductorium in practicam pro provectis in theorica, by Abraham Avigdor); Mafteah ha-sodot (Medical Prescriptions)

This volume consists of fourteenth-century Latin medical works translated into Hebrew. The first text is a unique and anonymous translation of a medical manual and collection of 592 prescriptions ascribed in the text to Gentile da Foligno (d. 1348), professor of medicine at Perugia and Padua. Gentile’s posthumous fame was considerable: he is memorialized in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 as “that most subtle investigator of Avicenna’s teachings.” Translations of da Foligno’s contemporaries follow, such as a treatise on surgery and bandaging by the Florentine physician Dino del Garbo (d. 1327). The final substantial work is the Mavo be-melakhah, a Hebrew translation by Abraham Avigdor (1350–after 1399) from the fourth book of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine. Avigdor, a member of a distinguished family of physicians, lived in France during the second half of the fourteenth century. He translated many medical texts from Latin into Hebrew.

Translators: Dino del Garbo; Abraham Avigdor; Authors: Avicenna; Gentile da Foligno

14th–15th c.

Manuscript on parchment and paper, 84 fols.

University of Pennsylvania, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 471

Italy