Layout: Index on ff. 1-2v in 6 columns (3 sets of word+space+chapter number); text thereafter in 2 columns of 60 lines; chapters are numbered up to 454 in early form arabic numerals. Script: Gothic Decoration: Opening initial, f. 3, 14-line, in red and blue with 2 void flowers on the letter; the ground is a succession of red upright crosses, the infilling contains void white X-shaped spaces against a red ground; Decoration: the remaining letters of the first word (-ostquam) alternate blue and red majuscules disposed vertically (facing the book’s gutter) along the outer edge of the initial’s background. Decoration: 2-line alternating plain red and blue initials, and paragraph marks. Binding: Bound, s. XV, in morocco over wooden boards, with on each board, originally, 4 corner bosses in brass and one center one (2 corner pieces missing), and with 2 fore edge straps, closing from front to back and attached on the front cover with multipointed star-headed nails, typical of Italian production Binding: Tooling in blind includes, from the outside working inwards: a rectangle of narrow strips curled around a bar; a row of 4-petalled flowers; single strips; and at the center, a narrow diamond-shaped space formed of blind rules on either side of a row of interlocking “S” shaped tools; groups of daisies (a larger center one and 4 smaller ones) at the 4 corners of the diamond Binding: In the diamond’s center, the center boss and scattered tooling of daisies and 4-petalled flowers. The binding appears to be too tall for the book it encloses; it may have originally been on a different book. Provenance: Belonged to the Roman historian of mathematics, Baldassare Boncompagni-Ludovisi (1821-1894), and listed in his two catalogues: Enrico Narducci, Catalogo di manoscritti ora posseduti da D. Baldassare Boncompagni (Rome, 1862) p. 154 at n. 339; and Enrico Narducci, Catalogo di manoscritti ora posseduti da D. Baldassare Boncompagni, 2nd ed., (Rome, 1892) p. 127 at n. 209. Provenance: On lower spine of the binding, the number “339” in white paint citing the first catalogue of the Boncompagni manuscripts. Auction of the Boncompagni collection: Catalogo della Biblioteca Boncompagni. I. Manoscritti, Facsimili, Edizioni del Secolo XV, Abbachi, Riviste. Auzione nei giorni 27 gennaio-12 febbraio, 1898 ... (Rome, 1898), this manuscript as lot 181. Provenance: On the front pastedown the bookplate of Dr. Edward Carl Streeter (1874-1947); purchased from him by the New York Academy of Medicine in 1928. Gatherings of 10 leaves with catchwords centered in lower last margin of each gathering, with simple pen flourishing on the 4 sides of the catchword: on ff. 12v, 22v, 32v, 42v, 52v, 61v (there are two leaves numbered “61”), 70v (there is an unnumbered leaf after 66), 80v, 90v, 100v, [110v but no catchword, as the book ends here]. Quire and leaf signatures as letters of the alphabet, a through l (first gathering has no marks), with early form arabic numerals for the leaves. At end of text, f. 110v, medicine to aid in urination. Printed in: In hoc volumine continentur. Insignium medicorum Joannis Serapionis Arabis De simplicibus medicinis opus praeclarum et ingens. Averrois Arabis de eisdem liber eximius. Rasis filii Zachariae, de eisdem opusculum perutile. Incerti item autoris de centaureo (Strassburg: Georg Ulricher, 1531) pp. 1-308 (of 399 pages in the volume); available in digitized copy from the University of Missouri, via the Internet Archive.
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