Maimonides [Moses Ben Maimon]

Chancery quarto (201 × 150 mm). Collation: (I) [a-q⁸ r⁶]: 134 leaves, colophon and quire register r5v, r6 blank (present). (II) A-C⁸: 24 leaves, colophon (without date) c8r, verso blank. 36 lines + headline (none in part II), types 2:80R, 3:100G. Initial spaces. Unrubricated. Marginal soiling, ancient repairs on two leaves, not affecting the text. Late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century vellum. A large copy, preserving some deckle edges.

Moritz Steinschneider, 1816-1907, Hebrew scholar-bibliographer.

Goff M-77; Hain 10524*; BMC VI 824 (IA.28878); BSB-Ink M-28; Bod-inc M-24 (listing all texts; Klebs 644.1. See Maimonides, Medical Aphorisms Treatises 1-5, ed. Gerrit Bos (Provo, 2004); Pearl Kibre, Hippocrates latinus (New York, 1985), pp. 110-123; Thorndike-Kibre 911, 824, 248, 1037.

Unrubricated. Marginal soiling, ancient repairs on two leaves, not affecting the text. Late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century vellum. A large copy, preserving some deckle edges.
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First Latin edition. The Aphorisms of Maimonides, a digest of the teachings of Galen organized in 25 “particulae”, are in an anonymous thirteenth-century translation from the Arabic. Part II consists of Johannes Damascenus, Aphorismi; Mohammed Rhasis, De secretis in medicinis; and pseudo-Hippocrates, Capsula eburnea. This last is a brief treatise on the external signs of impending death. According to its introduction, Hippocrates asked his servants to bury with him an ivory chest in which he had placed certain medical secrets. Learning of this, Caesar ordered the tomb to be opened and the chest removed, revealing this treatise. It is printed in the Latin translation made from an Arabic version by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century. It had already been printed in Milan, 1481, in the supplement of miscellaneous medical tractates added to the first edition Rhasis, Liber ad Almansorem (Goff R-175).