摘要：One must trek back through the dust of the Dark Ages a very great distance to discover the first medical book-list. \Ve may regard the catalogue of titles given by Cassiodorus (ca. A. D. 535) as one of the earliest extant. The list of Latin versions of Greek medical authors, Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides and Celsus as recommended bv the great monk, who had been earlier the Chancellor of Theodoric, indirectly served to guide Salernitan medicine along the firm lines of Greek accomplishment. It is a pity that we cannot reconstruct the medical portions of the libraries of Southern Italy particularly those of Basilian monasteries, for the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries; in order to get more light on Salerno for example; that we do not know the contents of the 12 great painted book-presses of Isidor of Seville; what texts were used in the public readings of Hippocrates,and Galen at Ravenna in the half-fabulous eighth century; what medicine was taught at Monte Cassino, 1Bobbio, St. Gall and Chartres and the Cathedral schools of Milan, Lucca, Pavia. The mnanifolding of texts, the teaching from texts went oni, of this we are sure. And altholigh there is a great gal in the story of the diffusion of scientific knowledge, it is dangerous to argue ex silentio. As a matter of fact the librarians of the ninth century already have stirred from their sleep, have opened their book-presses and Armaria and begun to take note of titles. They jot down their items on the final-gatherings of some incomplete manuscript, on any foldiings of sheep skin they may happen to have. Their ignorance or innocence in regard to the science of librarianship is touching. They get tired very soon-and they say so. "I am tired anid so finish, God be praised," says one; "space is lacking," says another, as he lays down the pen. "His be the praise in aeternum." The early cataloguers invariably slight the secular. never the Patristic,_ portions of their libraries, indeed they more than slight, they slash, censor, mutilate and falsify the items at the "profane" end of their lists. Medicine coming at the bottom of the heap as it does, suffers most. A typical Monastic catalogue begins with the wvorks of Augustine, Benedict, Basil, Jerome, Hilarius, next come the permitted classics, followed by legal codes, Monastic rules, grammars, lexicons, arithmetical treatises, natural histories, bestiaries, travels and finally medicine; lowest in the inventory, in nameless confusion or omitted altogether. The enumeration stops short just where we would have it full and explicit, stops with a curt "preter hos enumerare nolui (more than these items I refuse to enumerate), or with the exasperated snort "Ten more on profane science, of whose titles I am blessedly ignorant."
