Gilbertus Anglicus

I've talked before about John of Gaddesden, a late-13th-century doctor who wrote a compendium of medical knowledge. A little before him was another who created an encyclopedic work about what was known at the time of medicine and surgery.

His name was Gilbertus Anglicus (c.1180 - c.1250), called so because he was born in England, although after some initial education in his home country he went to Europe to study, particularly at the Salerno medical school. He actually returned to England for a time to assist a bishop, but that bishop died in 1205 and Gilbertus went back to Europe.

After 1230, he produced a seven-volume work in Latin called Compendium Medicinae. This work was copied and distributed as one of the foundational works of medical education for centuries (along with Gaddesden's). It was translated into Middle English in the early 1400s. It first saw formal print in 1510 with an edition as late as 1608. Chaucer includes him as one of the great physicians.

Among its seven volumes was a section on gynecology that was sometimes circulated separately as The Sickness of Women. Later it was called The Sickness of Women 2 after having a different author's work added. These became even more widely distributed than the Trotula.

One of the aspects that made Gilbertus' Compendium so valued was its inclusion of the knowledge of so many others. Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen are there, of course, but also Avicenna and Averroes, Macrobius, Boethius, several Arabians, Isaac Judaeus, and the Salernian writers.

Isaac Judaeus was mentioned briefly here regarding Charlemagne and an elephant, and I'd like to tell you more about him, starting tomorrow. Isaac, not the elephant.