The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb) was written in the first quarter of the 11^th century by the Persian polymath Abu ʻAli al-Husayn Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in the Latin West as Avicenna. The Canon is a summary of medical knowledge of the Islamic world in Ibn Sina’s time, which included the work of Graeco-Roman physicians that had been translated into Arabic and Syriac in earlier centuries. Originally written in Arabic, the Canon was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–87) and was a standard text of the medical curriculum until the late 17^th century. This manuscript of the Latin translation was copied in the 15^th century, probably in the Netherlands.

Following the Canon are two short excerpts concerning memory, written in a late 15^th-century English hand. The first (fols 99r–103r) is titled Ad memoriam preseruandum. The second (fols 103v–106r) is from Book 3 of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (80s BC), a text once attributed to the Roman author Cicero (106–43 BC) and the most popular book on Rhetoric in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Written on the last folio of the two memory texts (fol. 106v) is the name ‘Anthony Wood’ in a 17^th-century hand. It is possible that they belonged to the antiquarian Anthony Wood (1632–95), who bequeathed his library to the Ashmolean and sold some of his books during his lifetime.

 

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, nos 1356 and 1357; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), pp. 630–31; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 10; Paul O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum. Accedunt Alia Itinera. A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, Vol. VI (Alia Itinera II): Great Britain to Spain (London, 1989), p. 275.

Provenance:  With Anthony Wood in the 17^th century; the texts are first recorded at Winchester College in 1697, at which time they were separate.

Location: Fellows’ Library