SALIUS DIVERSUS, Petrus.

First edition of this work on fevers and cures for diseases less commonly known or treated of in other works, by the Italian physician Salius Diversis, of whom very little appears to be known. The first part is an academic work on pestilential fevers, discussing their causes (corruption of the humours), contagion, and cures. The second part, on less well-studied diseases, contains a long chapter on rabies, containing extensive discussions of the causes in dogs, the symptoms and treatments, which begins, however, with Salius’s treatment of insomnia and melancholy. Other ‘lesser-known’ conditions include inflammation of the brain, epilepsy and apoplexy caused by disorders of the blood, cardiac arrhythmia, pulmonary oedema, insomnia, and fatal illnesses relating to pregnancy, including diseases of the womb and purpureal fevers. Each condition is divided into causes, signs or indicators, prognosis (sometimes) and cures.

 Also here is his commentary on the De medendis humani corporis malis of another Italian physician, Donato Antonio ab Altomari, which continues the theme of discussing more unusual conditions, including memory loss, lethargy, paralysis, convulsions caused by rabies (again), catatonia and comas, etc., but also a large range of more mainstream conditions. There is, as in Salius’s main work, an interest in illnesses affecting women, including a variety of uterine conditions, as well as the failure to produce breast milk, or producing milk that is clotted.

The contemporary annotator notes symptoms and cures, as well as making textual corrections and frequent references to Hippocrates, sometimes giving page references to other medical texts.