(17a) It is not
unlikely that Arabic medicine had already found its way to Salernum
before the time of Constantine, but the influence of his translations
upon the later Middle Ages was very great.
(17a) Steinschneider: Virchow's Arch., Berl., 1867, xxxvii, 351.
The second was a more important source through the Latin translators
in Spain, particularly in Toledo, where, from the middle of the twelfth
till the middle of the thirteenth century, an extraordinary number of
Arabic works in philosophy, mathematics and astronomy were translated.
Among the translators, Gerard of Cremona is prominent, and has been
called the "Father of Translators." He was one of the brightest
intelligences of the Middle Ages, and did a work of the first importance
to science, through the extraordinary variety of material he put in
circulation. Translations, not only of the medical writers, but of an
indiscriminate crowd of authors in philosophy and general literature,
came from his pen. He furnished one of the first translations of
the famous "Almagest" of Ptolemy, which opened the eyes of his
contemporaries to the value of the Alexandrian astronomy.(18) Leclerc
gives a list of seventy-one works from his hand.
(18) For an account of that remarkable work see German
translation by Manitius, Leipzig, 1912.
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