Unde versus
Lynn Thorndike
Before the invention of printing and easy multiplication copies a text, memory inevitably played greater part in education, basic textbooks were often expressed verse order to aid memory. Of such works number by named known authors has come us entire: field elementary Latin grammar, Doctrinale Alexander Villa Dei, written 1199; arithmetic, Carmen de algorismo 284 hexameters same author, who further wrote on computus; botany materia medica , post-Carolingian poem ‘Macer,’ consisting 2269 lines 77 herbs; gems, eleventh-century Liber lapidum Marbod, which sixty stones are described 734 hexameters. Some these texts added succeeding generations, as case Regimen sanitatis ascribed medical school Salerno. For most this last is rhymed hexameters: Hec bona sunt ova — longa, parva, quoque nova; Et gallinarum tibi sint et non aliarum. Boni pisces, si cum vino bene misces; Quod misces, forsan damnum adipisceris. Salvia ruta faciunt pocula tuta; Adde rosam florem, minuit potenter amorem. But sometimes not, when pick-me-up advised for morning after: Si nocturna noceat potatio vini, Hoc tu mane bibas iterum fuerit medicina. Sometimes practice versification was extended indicating author text. A copy exposition Microtegni Galen Urso Todi delivered at Avignon 1198 says start: … Quare Ursus vocetur indicat versus, Laudensis medicus medicisque fidelis amicus, Quos super hanc partem Avenione duxit artem.
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