Inventarium sive Chirurgia Magna, Volume 2 Commentary

Book excerpt: This commentary on the last and greatest surgical encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (1363) analyzes its construction from earlier sources. The author's more than 3000 references to older medical authorities are traced to their sources and their use is discussed. The companion volume presents the text itself, which covers anatomy and the treatment of wounds, ulcers, fractures, dislocations, and a variety of other conditions and diseases, discussed within a broad framework of medical (physiological and pathological) learning. Together, the volumes illuminate the culmination of medieval surgery and its techniques in an academic setting and furnish a kind of chrestomathy of the whole range of literature known and cited in medieval medical faculties.