gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy, herbals, gems and healing, medicinal gems

Of the spurious work of Galen on forty-six plants and occult medicines there appear to be two different Latin translations from the Arabic, yet both executed at Marseilles, both from the earlier rendering from the Greek into Arabic which Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (Johannitius) had made in the second half of the ninth century, adding a commentary of his own, and both with the help of a Jew from Tortosa named Abraham. Of the Latin translation by Grumerus, a judge of Piacenza, which was discussed in my History of Magic and Experimental Science, II, 763–64, after the printed edition of Venice, 1609, there are also at least two manuscripts, both of the fifteenth century. At the Vatican, Palatine 1100, fols. 1–3v, is a parchment codex, but the first leaf is worm-eaten and in a bad state of preservation. In the Laurentian Library at Florence, Ashburnham 1448 (1371) is a paper quarto, with the date Feb. 3, 1434, at fol. 155v. Our treatise begins at fol. 109v, but breaks off at fol. 114v, in the midst of the account of the forty-second plant. Fols. 115 and 116 are now missing from the manuscript.