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PERSONALITY OF PLATEARIO 251 
Another personal reference appears in the MS. Secres de Salerne 
of 1458 (see infra, p. 270), under Appinm risus (perhaps Ranunculus 
sceleratus L.). ‘‘ And they state in some books that it is deadly to 
man. And I, Plateario (Plentaire in the Fr. MS.), have myself 
found through experience that to those who have taken it, it works 
greatharm. Andon that account I prefer that it be used externally 
in guise of a plaster only.” (Camus, 22.) 
Evidence of Plateario’s sound sense and restraint is shown: in 
his refusal to share in popular delusions current about the man- 
drake ; remarking its “‘ zatura frigerandi et mortificandt,” he says 
it is a remedy for bilious disorder ; its juice applied with mother’s 
milk is cooling and produces sleep; its cold puts out the sacred 
jire of erysipelas (herba frigida, extinguit ignem sacrum); it may 
promote conception, though the similitude of man or woman 
claimed to be found in its root is not to be found in nature, but 
instead has been fraudulently fashioned by rustics or evildoers— 
“a rusticts vel malefidis sophistice sic formatur.” And so Bartholo- 
maeus Anglicus cites him, fol. 51, “de Mandragora.” 
For other indications of Plateario’s personality, see supra, pp. 
221, 222, and znfra, p. 261. 
Plateario’s Glossae,—Glossae super antidotarium, is a commen- 
tary, to be dated perhaps 1140, on the Antidotarium of Nicolao 
Preposito of about 1110. The Glossae formed the basis of the 
four books of medical verse by Aegidius of Corbeil, about 1180, 
called “De Laudibus et virtutibus compositorum medicaminum.” 
Their relation to Plateario’s Glossae is thus stated by Aegidius 
himself: « Sudstramentum et materiam nostrae expositionis sumen- 
tes Glossae super Antidotarium a magistro Matthaeo Plateario 
editas.” Aegidius laments the death of Plateario in his lines 
aTO+11 3 : 
Vellem, quod medicae doctor Platearius artis 
Munere divino vitales carperet auras! 
Gauderet metricis pedibus sua scripta ligari, 
Et numeris parere meis.* 
Aegidius, in his opening lines, chanted the effect upon him as 
a young listener when Plateario’s disclosures of the mysteries of 
"Quoted, Meyer, 3: 507 and 467, from Acgidii Corboliensis carmina medica, 
edid. Choulant, 57. 
