BOOKS OF SECRETS. 25 



Medecine," dating from early in the sixteenth century. Brunet enumerates 

 a number of editions ; there are some — not in Brunet— in the British 

 Museum ; I have one or two in neither, so we may infer that there were a 

 good many issues, that it must have been in demand, and that, as the 

 surviving copies demonstrate, the book got hard usage. 



It gives directions how and when to bleed, an art almost forgotten ; 

 how to manage sick people in the months of the year \ how to treat 

 various diseases ; it describes the virtues of certain plants and how to 

 make waters from them, and gives numerous medical receipts. This is 

 followed by an astrology for shepherds, a treatise on comets and their 

 significance according to the signs of the zodiac in which they appear, a 

 section on the magnitude of the Universe, and the book concludes with a 

 description of hell, deep down in the earth, dark, cloudy, redolent of 

 sulphur and other bad smells and enveloped in nine kinds of fire. 



This is a real book of secrets, but its origin is obscure. It is said to 

 be compiled by Master Raoul du Mont Verd ; translated from Latin 

 into French, the which book Hippocrates sent to Jalius, who was ill of 

 various maladies external and internal. In another place, however, 

 it is said that the book was sent by "Hippocrates to Galen, . . . and 

 that the contained receipts were afterwards approved by Galen." These 

 statements are hard to reconcile, and one would gladly know how 

 Hippocrates bridged the gap of some five hundred years between himself 

 and Galen. 



The other book is also of the sixteeenth century and is " The Myrrour 

 or Glasse of helth," usually ascribed to Thomas Moulton. It is a little 

 black letter octavo and deals especially with the plague, the causes of it, 

 how to avoid it, and how to treat one who is attacked by it. Then follow 

 the influences of the planets in the days of the week, and the signs of the 

 zodiac in the months of the year from March to February, and remedies 

 "for dyvers Infyrmytes and dyseases, that hurteth the bodye of man." It 

 has some analogy therefore to the preceding volume. 



