SCOT AGAIN AT COURT 153 



and adding that Camperius^ had the highest 

 opinion of him. An anonymous writer, De claris 

 Doctrina Scotis, is even more precise, telhng us 

 that Scot was noted for the cures he effected in 

 difficult cases, and that he excelled in the treatment 

 of leprosy, gout, and dropsy.^ 



Some slight remains of this skill are to be found 

 in the libraries of Europe; for Michael Scot was 

 a writer on the science of his art as well as a 

 practising physician. The chief of these relics is 

 a considerable work on the urine. This subject 

 had been widely, if not deeply, studied by the more 

 ancient medical authorities, whose investigations 

 appear in the Ketab Alhaul of Al Kairouani,^ and in 

 a book to which we have already more than once 

 referred : the De Urinis compiled for Frederick in 

 1212.^ The same title belongs to one of the treatises 

 by Avicenna, which has been reprinted in the pre- 

 sent century.^ 



The De Urinis of Michael Scot seems now 

 extant in the form of an Italian translation alone. 

 The exact title is as follows : ' Delia notitia e pro- 

 gnosticatione dell'orine, secondo Michele Scoto, cosi 

 de' sani, come delli infermi,' or, more briefly, ' El 

 trattato de le urine secondo Michaele Scoto.' '^ The 



• This was Symphorien Champier, physician to Henry ii. of France. 

 - See the Sibbald Collections, Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. 



^ See D'Herbelot. This author was a Jew. 



* See ante, pp. 20, 151. Further investigation might show that it 

 Avas Michael Scot himself who undertook this work for the Emperor. 

 In that case it would probably be the original from which the two 

 Italian versions mentioned above were made. Nor is it unlikely he 

 should have devoted himself to medicine as early as 1212 considering 

 the nature of the work bv Avicenna on which we know he was enaaged 

 in 1210. 



^ In Ideler's Physici et Medici Graeci Minores, Berlin, 1842, vol. ii. 

 ^ Florence, Bibl. Naz. xv. 27, cod. chart, saec. xv. ; Naples, Bibl. 

 Naz. cod. chart, saec. xv. from the Minieri Riccio collection. 



