The person of Ortolf remains elusive. He
was not, according to SCHWARZ (S.41), identical with OrtoIf
G r o e s s (tt... dass der Verfasser nicht identisch sein kann
mit Ortolf Groess, der 1496 und 1501 Bürgermeister von Würzburg
wart'.). Yet this proves that the name Ortolf does exist and is a
sound Bavarian personal name. In the year 1910, the statement had
been made by KLEIN (Alte Meister,S.3) to the effect that no
documentary proof of Ortolf's existence had been discovered
( "... sein Existenz ist noch nicht urkundlich erwiesen".). And
in the present year, 1955, Josef HOFMANN states (Mainfr.Jb. 5.120)
that all attempts to trace Ortolf have been unsuccessful ( "Wenn
es auch bis jetzt nicht gelungen ist, den Meister Ortolf als
Arzt in Würzburg archivalisch zu fassen...") and later, (3.129)
that there are no sources in the Würzburg city archives ( "Das
Stadtarchiv Würzburg besitzt keine Quellen fiber Ortolf. ").
From the evidence provided by the
manuscripts of Ortolf's treatise on medicine, the conclusion is
reached that this treatise, composed by a Bavarian doctor named
Ortolf, who practised medicine in the city of Würzburg, must be
placed at an earlier date than has hitherto been given by the
histories and bibliographies of medicine: one or two decades
before the year 1398 is the estimated date of completion of this
Arzneibuch. This date makes due allowance for the probable age
of the author at the time of composition of his treatise; it is
considered that he was no longer a young man at that time. This
date also takes into account the omissions and errors of the two
earliest dated manuscripts, errors arising from the copying by
scribes.
Allegations that Ortolf's work was
old- fashioned, behind the times, and inferior in quality, are
disproved by this estimated date of circa 1375; judged, as
related to its period in time and not from the level of medical
knowledge of the eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth centuries,
Ortolf's Arzneibuch is by no means as poor in quality as some
historians of medicine have adjudged it to be.
The treatise of Ortolf has suffered the
fate undergone by many more treatises in all branches of knowledge:
imperfect transcription, additions and interpolations (many of
these of a low standard), and errors of many kinds not due to the
author have combined to obscure form and content of Ortolf ' s Arzneibuch, until, at length, in the hands of the printers of
the fifteenth century, it assumed a shape and a form well -nigh
unrecognisable; its fate may be described in the words of PAGEL
who, discussing an earlier medical work ascribed to Albertus
Magnus, wrote (Einf. G. d. M. , S.170) : " Der Grund far die
divergirende Beurtheilung liegt in dem verkehrten Massstabe, den
man an die Leistungen dieser Manner legt, indem man sie kritiklos
fti` r alles, was unter ihrem Namen veröffentlicht worden ist, als
Verfasser verantwortlich macht, ohne die erkleckigen Fälschungen,
Interpolationen, Einschiebungen zu berfßcksichtigen, die in jener
Zeit, wo man auf die handschriftliche Vervielfältigungen der
Werke angewiesen war, nachweislich in erschreckendem Grade von
unredlichen und gewissenlosen Abschreibern vorgenommen warden
sind. Dadurch ist eine tolle Confusion entstanden, die bezüglich
einzelner Autoren noch heute nicht beseitigt ist ".
