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Ortolf von Bayerlant's treatise on medicine (Wurzburg Ms. M. ch. f.79)

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FollanJ_1956redux.pdf (60.61Mb)
Date
1956
Author
Follan, James
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Abstract
 
 
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 ".
 
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/28029
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