VALLÉS, Francisco

Rare ‘third edition’ of this successful commentary on Hippocrates’ work on ‘popular’ or common diseases (De morbis popularibus), first published 1569; it had in fact already gone through at least six editions. Vallés comments on selected ‘sententia’ or brief passages from a Latin translation of Hippocrates, as well as case studies or ‘aegroti’ in which Hippocrates relates his case notes for specific incidents of a disease. Such examples are not limited to the ‘aegroti,’ however, but are scattered liberally throughout the work. Sometimes these are sensational stories (what Vallés calls ‘historiae mirabilis’), such as when a snake crawled into the mouth of a youth sleeping off a night of drinking unmixed wine, which he devoured before dying in convulsions. Vallés seems to contradict Hippocrates here, noting that wine would more likely drive serpents away; drinking milk and sleeping on the ground, however, is extremely dangerous, since reptiles particularly like the taste and smell of milk (p. 273). While much of the work is given over to ‘Epidemics,’ the work covers illnesses, diseases, pain and conditions of all kinds and their symptoms and causes, usually attributed to humoral imbalances. Vallés deals, via Hippocrates, with (inter alia) toothaches, breaks and knocks to bones, head colds, abscesses and tumours, and nosebleeds.