24 TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER. 
foods.* The critical examination and often very difficult inter- 
pretation of many statements relating to this subject contained 
in Arabic literature, which is constantly progressing, admits of 
the hope of some very remarkable revelations in this respect. 
A pharmacentical manual of Aboul Mena, called Cohen el At- 
thar (Priest and Apothecary), who lived in the thirteenth century 
at Cairo, has not yet been printed.? 
%. In the far West, these antique recollections were likewise 
partly revived at the same time in civil and ecclesiastical 
quarters. Thus the Emperor Charlemagne, through special 
edicts, issued in the year 812, ordered the cultivation, north of 
the Alps, of a series of long-known useful and medicinal plants, 
among which may be mentioned :* Althea, Amygdalus, Anisum, 
Coriandrum, Cydonia, Feniculum, Iris (Gladiolus), Levisti- 
cum, Mentha, Petroselinum, Rosmarinus, Ruta, Sabina, Salvia, 
and Sinapis. It is worthy of note that the following useful 
plants, which are indigenous to Italy or generally cultivated 
there, are wanting in the “ Capitulare,” or the principal one of 
those Imperial edicts, viz.: Glycyrrhiza, Inula Helenium, 
Lavandula, Punica Granatum, and Thymus vulgaris. In the 
architectural plan of the convent of St. Gall, which was drawn 
in the year 820, but was not executed, the place which the 
medicinal plants were to occupy in the garden was designated, 
perhaps in compliance with the ‘ Capitulare.” * 
In the library of the University of Wurzburg, Germany, a 
recipe for a mixture of powders, ‘ contra omnes Febres et contra 
omnia venena et omnium Serpentium morsus et contra omnes 
angustias cordis et corporis,” has been preserved which is perhaps. 
a century older than the preceding. This curious manuscript 
'Fliickiger, loc. cit., p. 1,003. 6 
_ * According to Leclerc, ‘Histoire de la médecine arabe,” IT. (Paris, 
1876), p. 215, it appears very worthy of notice. 
_* The complete list is given by Pertz, ‘‘ Monumenta Germanize his- 
torica,” legum tom. I. (1835), p. 186, and also in Meyer’s ‘‘Geschichte 
- Botanik,” IIL, p. 401. Compare farther, Fliickiger, loc. cit., p- 
1,005. ee 
