152 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



a physician. Considering indeed the place he he' 

 about the Emperor's person, and the high estimatk 

 in which his master held him, it seems not at 

 improbable that his may have been the hand whi< 

 drew these wise enactments, or his at least tl 

 suggestion which commended them to Frederic 

 They must in any case have been the rules und 

 which he carried on his work as a doctor of medicin 



This branch of Michael Scot's activity relat 

 itself easily and naturally to what we already kno 

 of his acquirements and familiarity with the Arabia 

 authors. It was from the De Medicina of Has 

 that he borrowed so much material for his Physi 

 nomia. The Abbreviatio Avicennae too, which ] 

 translated for Frederick in 1210, was in no smj 

 part a treatise on comparative anatomy and physi 

 logy, nor is it likely that he can have missed rea< 

 ing the famous canon of the same author, in whi< 

 Avicenna expounds a complete body of practic 

 medicine. We need not wonder then to find tha 

 on Scot's return to court, his work on Averro 

 done, he added the practice of physic to his duti 

 as Imperial Astrologer. This new profession mu 

 have offered itself to him as another means 

 securing a general forgetfulness of the questio: 

 able direction in which his philosophical studii 

 had lately carried him. 



He seems in fact to have won almost as muc 

 fame in medicine as he had made for himself in tl 

 study of mathematics. Lesley says ' he gained muc 

 praise as a philosopher, astronomer, and physicial 

 Dempster speaks of his 'singular skill/ callii 

 him ' one of the first physicians for learning 



1 Historia Ecdesiastica, xii. 495. Dempster professed at Pisa ai 

 Bologna between the years 1616 and 1625. 



