Table Of ContentGUIGONIS DE CAULHIACO
(GUY DE CHAULIAC)
INVENTA RI UM
SIVE
CHIRURGIA MAGNA
VOLUME ONE: TEXT
STUDIES IN
ANCIENT MEDICINE
EDITED BY
JOHN SCARBOROUGH
VOLUME 14,1
GUIGONIS DE CAULHIACO
(GUY DE CHAULIAC)
INVENTARIUM
SIVE
CHIRURGIA MAGNA
Volume One: Text
edited by
Michael R. McV augh
EJ. BRILL
LEIDEN • NEW YORK • KOLN
1997
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ISSN 0925-1421
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ISBN (set) 90 04 10785 1
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction ix
The Inventarium
Proemium
Capitulum singulare 2
Rubrice 11
Tractatus primus de anathomia 23
Tractatus secundus de apostematibus, exituris, et pustulis 57
Tractatus tercius de vulneribus 134
Tractatus quartus de ulceribus 206
Tractatus quintus de algebra et extencione et restauracione
ossium fractorum et dislocatorum 250
Tractatus sextus de omnibus egritudinibus que non sunt
proprie apostemata neque ulcera neque ossium passiones
pro quibus habetur recursus ad cyrurgicum 272
Tractatus septimus qui antydotarius dicitur 391
Variant readings 467
PREFACE
In 1971 the Early English Text Society published the first of a projected
two volumes of The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chau/iac, edited by Margaret S.
Ogden. That first volume contained a transcription of a Middle English
translation of Guy's lnventarium or Chirurgia magna; the second was
planned to include a commentary on the Middle English translator's
technique, on his errors and peculiarities of style, but also on the sources
of Guy's original Latin version, since errors made by Guy when inter-
preting those sources had sometimes left their traces in the subsequent
English.
By 1981 Dr. Ogden had decided that she would be unable to complete
the commentary volume, and she proposed that I should take it over. She
and I had long had a personal connection, for I had known her when I
was growing up in Ann Arbor while she was at work on the Middle Eng-
lish Dictionary, but I had only become aware at the end of my graduate
training, in the mid-1960s, that this mother of my high-school friends
was at work in the same general area of scholarship-the history of me-
dieval medicine-that I had come to mark out for myself. My interest in
Arnau de Vilanova and the medical faculty at Montpellier in the early
fourteenth century, where Guy was trained, had led to continuing corres-
pondence between us and thus made her eventual proposal a natural one.
le,
It also meant that I felt competent to take over the commentary-but, as I
warned her then in 1981, I could not hope to devote much time to Guy
for some years to come; I had just committed myself to explore the social
history of medicine in Arnau de Vilanova's world, a project that I expec-
ted would require many years to complete. She understood the need for
delay, and graciously passed over to me all her research materials. In the
next few years I was able to set aside a little time for work on the com-
mentary, familiarizing myself with the problems involved and sending
her a draft of a commentary on book I of the Cyrurgie for her criticism
and suggestions, but this was all I was able to do before her death in
1988. My social history was finally published in 1993 and left me free to
devote more ofmy time to Guy.
viii PREFACE
Dr. Ogden had recognized from the beginning that her plans for the
commentary were ambitious and that it might have to be altered or re-
duced in scope. As I worked more and more on that aspect of the com-
mentary that she had done least with, the identification of Guy's Latin
sources, and consulted with the editors of the EETS, it became obvious
that the eventual product would be far too large to be published as a
whole. Realizing that her projected volume might be thought of as com-
prising one commentary on the Middle English and a second on the Latin
Guy, with only slight overlap between them, I concluded that the two
might be dissociated and published separately. To publish a commentary
on the Latin Inventarium, however, meant providing an accompanying
Latin text, which again raised the problem of undue length, and I am
very grateful to Dr. Julian Deahl (and to E. J. Brill) for agreeing to the
publication of so large a work. Volume I of this study, therefore, con-
tains the complete text of Guy's Inventarium; volume 2 will contain a
commentary on the text that identifies the sources of Guy's citations and
discusses some aspects of his Latin terminology. Dr. Ogden's commen-
tary on the Middle English translation, which was virtually complete at
the time of her death, is expected to be published later by the EETS.
During the thirty years or so that this work has been in the making in
one form or another, many people have offered advice and encourage-
ment to its authors: among others, Patrick Browder, Luke Demaitre,
Richard Durling, Roger French, Katherine Kube!, Peter Jones, Loren
MacKinney, Julia McVaugh, Vivian Nutton, Tiziana Pesenti, Kari Anne
Rand Schmidt, William Sharpe, Nancy Siraisi, Helen Valls, Linda
Voigts, and Mary Jane Williams. Dr. Ogden would no doubt have ac-
knowledged the help of still more scholars of whom I am unaware, and I
apologize for their inescapable omission. She would have wanted me too,
I am sure, to express her thanks for the John Simon Guggenheim Memo-
rial Fellowship and for the support from the Horace H. Rackham School
of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan that made possible
much of her work on Guy de Chauliac. I am myself deeply thankful to
my own University of North Carolina for granting me a research leave
and to Clare Hall, Cambridge, for a Visiting Fellowship in the fall of
1994, during which much of my final work on this study was carried out.
INTRODUCTION
It would be by no means unreasonable to assert that the Inventarium ( of-
ten called the Chirurgia magna)1 of the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac,
completed in 1363, marks the end of medieval medicine-"end" under-
stood both as fulfillment and as termination. Certainly it brought medie-
val surgery to a close. During the previous two hundred years, Western
Europe had developed a tradition of surgical literature, something quite
unknown in the Greek or Arab world, producing a series of texts that
grew more elaborate, more highly organized, and more physiological in
character. Beginning with Ruggiero Frugardi in the late twelfth century
and his various commentators in the early thirteenth, and continuing with
independent works by Bruno Longoburgo, Teodorico Borgognoni, and
Guglielmo da Saliceto, what had originally been an Italian tradition came
to France with Lanfranco about 1300 and was continued there by Henri
de Mondeville a decade later. Guy de Chauliac is the next figure in this
tradition, but with Guy this steady production of Latin surgical texts
abruptly comes to an end.
Guy was evidently quite conscious that he stood in such a surgical tra-
dition. His lnventarium begins with a capitulum singulare that contains
a remarkable history of surgery;2 it was no doubt modeled on the histo-
ries of medicine with which certain Arab authors ( e.g., Haly Abbas and
Rasis) had begun their works, but its willingness to critically evaluate
earlier authorities is much more obvious, particularly in its account of
European authors of the previous two centuries:
[Before Avicenna] everyone was both physician and surgeon,
but afterwards, whether because of greed or because of too
much to do, surgery was set apart and given into the hands of
mechanics. The first of these were Ruggiero, Rolando, and the
1 The title that the work bears in manuscript is "Inventarium seu collectorium in parte
cyrurgicali medicine"; "Chirurgia magna" was the title given it by Renaissance editors.
2 See Chiara Crisciani, "History, Novelty, and Progress in Scholastic Medicine,"
Osiris, 2nd series, 6 (1990), 118-139, esp. 131-132.
X INTRODUCTION
Four Masters, who wrote separate works of surgery into which
they put much of an empirical character. Then came Iamerius,
who wrote a crude surgery in which he said many stupid things,
but often followed Ruggiero. Afterwards came Bruno, who cor-
rectly adopted the teachings of Galen and Avicenna and the
techniques of Albucasis, though he did not have a complete
translation of Galen's books and left out anatomy almost en-
tirely. Immediately after him came Teodorico, who wrote his
book by stealing everything that Bruno said and adding a few
tales from his master Ugo da Lucca. Guglielmo da Saliceto was
a notable figure, and wrote two texts, one in medicine and one
of surgery, and in my judgment he wrote well about what he
treated. Lanfranco also wrote a book in which he put very little
besides the things he found in Guglielmo, though he reordered
them. At this time master Arnau de Vilanova flourished in both
areas and wrote many good books. At Paris, Henri de Monde-
ville began a treatise in which he tried to harmonize Teodorico
and Lanfranco, but it was left incomplete at his death.3
Guy's overall judgment that Western surgery had steadily advanced has
decisively shaped the interpretation presented by many later historians of
medieval Latin surgery as a progressive, rational, text-oriented but ana-
tomy-based enterprise. For Guy had come to believe that the most impor-
tant thing for a surgeon, ranking ahead even of practical experience, was
learning-and not just of the principles of surgery but of medicine too,
both theory and practice:
As regards theory he has to understand the res naturales, res
non naturales, and res contra naturam. First he has to under-
stand the res natura/es, especially anatomy, without which no-
thing can be done in surgery .... Let him understand complex-
ional doctrine too, because medicines must be adapted to the
different bodily natures ... and the same is true of the faculties.
He also has to understand the res non naturales, air and food
and drink and the like, since these are the causes of all health
and illness. He must also understand the res contra naturam, es-
pecially disease, because the program of treatment is derived di-
rectly from this, and let him not be ignorant of cause, because if
he cures without understanding it the reward should be not his
but fortune's. And let him not overlook symptoms, for they
3 For the Latin text, see below, pp. 6/26-7/ 3.
