264 ASTER History; PLATEARIO 
This preztoso codice, as Camus terms it, dates doubtless from 
about 1180, or not long, as Meyer remarks, after the death of its 
original author. It seems to have been an expansion from Circa 
instans; possibly prepared by Matteo Plateario II himself; per- 
haps by his nephew Giovanni; or by some compiler soon after; 
it might be Salernus (page 224), if this should prove to be the 
same with the Compendium of which Salernus makes constant 
citation, about 1160? in his Catholica. Evidently the author felt 
that for the purposes of this MS., subjects other than plants 
should receive emphasis ; he expands his chapter on Lac into 4 
columns, and that on Vinum to 8 ; he adds new chapters on 
Axungia, Oleum, Caseus viridis, Aqua vitis, Cerebrum, Cor, Lingua, 
Spina, Caballi marini, Cantarides ; in fact some 50 similar subjects 
are listed by Camus (p. 14). 
2. Giovannian recension of Circa instans, probably prepared 
by Giovanni Plateario III, nephew of Matteo II, its author, per- 
haps by 1150, adding to his uncle’s MS. the following citations or 
references and perhaps others : 
a. Reference under Améra to his mother’s curing a noble lady, 
naming her by initial only, J. 
4. Reference to his uncle's cure by using Strucium, calling him 
avunculus ; this word and the letter 1 just mentioned, surviving 
unchanged in the 7ractatus. 
¢. Reference to (his uncle’s?) Compendium, under Acetum. 
d. Possibly he, rather than his uncle, inserted the references to 
the Antidotarium and to the Passionarius. 
e. Arabic citations (unless these were by his uncle). oe 
knowledge of this recension consists of inferences from the printed 
Ferrara edition and from the composite state of the Zractatus Her- 
barum. That his revision was made very early after his uncle’s 
death is shown by its lack of any of the later Arabic knowledge; 
“he had not yet known,’’ says Camus (15), “the translations. of 
Albucasi, of Serapion, etc., with which Gerard da Cremona (1 pa 
1187), exercised so great an influence on mediaeval medicine. 
His Arabic citations are from Rhases and Avicenna and include 
the remark under Cepa that “its use among the Arabs is show? 
by the writings of Isaac, made known to the physicians of Salerno 
by Constantinus.”’ 
