LEONHARD FUCHS NEUMANN. 643 



to fill a chair in an Italian university. Much earlier, m 1537, Duke 

 Albrecht of Prussia had endeavored to persuade Fuchs to become 

 court physician to his brother-in-law, King Christian III of Den- 

 mark, and also professor of the medical school of Copenhagen. 1 

 These two offers, which were distinct honors for Fuchs, Haller 

 evidently had in mind when he said in his Bibliotheca medicinae 

 practicae that Fuchs was the first German physician whose fame 

 reached beyond the borders of his own country. (" Primus inter 

 Germanos ad magnam celebritatem apud exteros pervenit.") 



Another medical subject in which Fuchs took special interest next 

 to anatomy was his lectures on the practice of medicine. In these, 

 as in his writings, his chief aim was to exclude as much as possible 

 the Arabic writers from the medical curriculum, but instead to read 

 and explain the Greek medical writers. This leads us to Fuchs 1 

 activity as a medical writer, which is very comprehensive. His writ- 

 ings on this subject may be divided into three sections: (1) Transla- 

 tions of and commentaries on Greek writers; (2) his own contribu- 

 tions; and (3) his polemic writings. 



There are nine translations and commentaries, of which five deal 

 with Galen, three with Hippocrates, and one entitled Nicolai Myrepsi 

 Alexandrini medicamentorum * * * Hactenus in Germania non 

 visum * * * e Graeco in Latinam recens conversum lucullentis- 

 simisque annotationibus illustratum, Basilaae, 1549 (Plate 4) ; and 

 several times reprinted. This translation of a Greek manuscript has 

 an interesting literary history. The author of this collection of pre- 

 scriptions is really Nicodemus Myrepsus 2 Alexandrinus, 3 who flour- 

 ished from the middle to the end of the thirteenth century. Fuchs 

 supposed him to be identical with Nicolaus Propositi, 4 whom he con- 

 founded with Nicolaus Salernitanus, who lived at Salerno at the 

 beginning of the twelfth century, a mistake committed also by other 

 medical writers and bibliographers. We are indebted to Ernest 

 Wickersheimer, librarian of the Academie de medecine in Paris, for 

 correcting this bibliographical blunder. In an instructive article 5 

 published in 1911 (Archiv fiir Geschichte der Medizin, Bd. V, 302- 

 310) he was able to prove that Nicolaus Salernitanus, wrongly called 

 Prepositus and Nicolaus Prepositi are two distinct writers ; the latter 

 was a student at the University of Paris in 1472, and evidently 

 flourished until the early years of the sixteenth century. 



1 Voigt, Joh. Briefwechsel der beriihmtesten Gelehrten des Zeitalters der Reformation 

 mit Ilorzog Albrecht von Preussen. Koenigsberg, Gebriider Borntrager, 1841. 

 3 Mu/>e^os, apothecary. 



3 After the city of his birth, Alexandria. 



4 " Quod certo comperiet, qui fragmentum hoc quod passim sub Nicolai Praepositi nomine 

 circumfertur ". . . . Nicolai Myrepsi Alexandrini Medicamentorum opus. ... a Leon- 

 harto Fuchsio . . . e graeco in latinum vecens conuersum. . . . Basileae, 1540. Prae- 

 fatio, A 3 , recto. 



5 Nicolaus Prepositi, ein franzroesischer Arzt ums Jahr 1500 ; von Er. Wickersheimer 

 ^Paris). 



