VALLÉS, Francisco

Rare‚Äö third edition‚Äö of this successful commentary on Hippocrates‚Äö work on popular or common diseases (De morbis popularibus), first published 1569; it had in fact already gone through at least six editions. Vall és comments on selected sententia or brief passages from a Latin translation of Hippocrates, as well as case studies or aegroti in which Hippocrates relates his case notes for specific incidents of a disease. Such examples are not limited to the aegroti, however, but are scattered liberally throughout the work. Sometimes these are sensational stories (what Vall és calls historiae mirabilis ), such as when a snake crawled into the mouth of a youth sleeping off a night of drinking unmixed wine, which he devoured before dying in convulsions. Vall és seems to contradict Hippocrates here, noting that wine would more likely drive serpents away; drinking milk and sleeping on the ground, however, is extremely dangerous, since reptiles particularly like the taste and smell of milk (p. 273). While much of the work is given over to Epidemics, the work covers illnesses, diseases, pain and conditions of all kinds and their symptoms and causes, usually attributed to humoral imbalances. Vall és deals, via Hippocrates, with (inter alia) toothaches, breaks and knocks to bones, head colds, abscesses and tumours, and nosebleeds.