252 AsTER History; PLATEARIO 
medicine came to him as a voice from a new world, 
Quae secreta diu noctis latuere sub umbra. 
Clausa, verecundi signo celata pudoris, 
Gesta sub involucro mentis, clarescere quaerunt. 
Plateario’s greater work, his Circa instans, receives separate 
treatment, p. 258. 
7. The medica Salernitana whom we may call the lady Licin1A, 
fram her use of the remedy /icinium; sister of Matteo II and 
mother of Giovanni III; our knowledge of whom comes from the 
chapter of the Circa instans headed Améra,* Italian and late Latin 
for amber. Under this remedy, administered contra suffocationem 
matricis, it is further stated “only by use of the fumesfrom such a 
licinium (usually used of /izé), soaked in oil, put on fire and then 
extinguished, and applied to the nostrils, the mother of Joannes 
Platearius purged and cured a certain noble lady.’ Those who 
doubt the existence of 8, Giovanni III, must also doubt that of 7, 
and assign the references to her + to the mother of Giovanni IL 
Fourta GENERATION 
8. Giovanni Plateario \11,t writing perhaps 1160 A. D., son 
of the lady Licinia (whom he calls maver); nephew of the great 
Matteo II (whom he calls avunculus); the reviser of the Circa 
instans, whose name appeared as its author in the first printed edi- 
tion, Ferrara, 1488, in the form /vhannes Platearius, with the epi- 
thet excellentissimus vir. 
SUBSEQUENT PLATEARII 
g. Socius Platearii—Some Salernitan sufficiently intimate with 
the Platearius family to know who was the giver of the licintum 
rn 
* Another early use of the word is by Odo Cremonensis, line 18, ‘* Laudes ambra 
merens levis est et dentibus haerens.’’ 
+The revision of the Circa instans by her son, c. 1160, the oldest reference 
{assuming it to be correctly preserved in the 7yactatus herbarum of ¢. 133°): reads 
under Ambra, ‘ Solummodo licinio tali oleo intincto accensum et extinctum et nari 
appositum m, [mater, 7. ¢., mihi mater] purgavit et liberavit quendam nobilem.”’ 
French version of 1458 reads «le maistre dit que par la fumee de ce linegnon pete 
Ses Sol- 
{ Such a ‘Giovanni posteriore, vissuto circa gli anni, 1130-1160,’ was claimed 
as probable by Camus, 8, though remarking ‘others doubt the existence of this 
Platearius.’’ : 
