THE HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 235 



horses, and the treatment of their diseases. That he must have been 

 an important personage, and much esteemed by his patron, is attested 

 by the circumstance that his names appear among the signers of 

 the king's testament : " Ego Jordanus magnus justitia ruis Rufus 

 de Calabria imperialis Marescallus major interfui his et subscribi 

 feci." (Frederick reigned from 1212 to 1250 a. d.) Rufus's work, 

 " De Medieina Equorum," appears to have been written with the 

 advice and consent of the king, but it has been incorrectly asserted 

 that the latter himself wrote it. It appears, from Rufus's own 

 words, that the king had already died at the time of its publication, 

 which accordingly must have taken place subsequent to 1250. It 

 was written in Latin, but at an early date was honored with transla- 

 tions into Italian, and in 1818 Molin, professor in Padua, gave out a 

 Latin edition. None of the ancient Latin works upon this subject 

 afford more pleasure to the reader than this of Ruffus's. From it 

 one can easily perceive that he was a person of considerable expe- 

 rience, far exceeding any of his successors in ability for a period of 

 nearly four hundred years. We do not find in his writings any of 

 the superstitious fables or astrological nonsense which encumbered the 

 works of his predecessors ; he was an earnest student of Nature, and 

 gave his conclusions with earnestness and directness. It is certain 

 that he knew little of Yegetius, or of the collected writings of Greek 

 authors ; at least, he made but little use of them. Many of his di- 

 rections are not without value even in our day. Many names which 

 he gave to diseases have been adopted into other languages. Hazard 

 possessed several manuscripts, and especially a French translation of 

 his writings. The contents of one of these manuscripts on vellum, 

 from the fourteenth century, is given as follows : 1. The Creation 

 and Nativity of the Horse. 2. His Capture and Training. 3. The 

 Care and Treatment. 4. The Recognition of the Parts of the Body. 

 5. The Diseases. 6. The Medicines and Remedies. 



The invention of printing gave a great impetus to the publica- 

 tion of works of all kinds — to a degree, in fact, which we of this 

 day and generation can scarcely appreciate. In this regard the pub- 

 lication of medical works kept even pace with those of theology and 

 other branches of learning. In our own field of study there ap- 

 peared a work of rare value ; one, indeed, which marks a turning- 

 point in the development of veterinary medicine. Up to this time 

 there had been no book on the diseases of animals since the days of 

 Aristotle which endeavored to enter at all into the study of their 

 anatomy based on special dissections. This ground was first broken 

 by an Italian work entitled " Dell' Anatomia et dell' Infirmita del 



