J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)
E. Schultheisz and L. Tardy: The Contacts of the two Dees and Sir Philipp Sidney with the Hungarian Physicians
ioo Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl . 6.) By that time his son Arthur Dee was 10 years old. As Figurovski writes relying on British sources, Arthur, though still a child, got an inside view of the world of experiments. 1 8 As is to be read in the work of Wilhelm D. Richter, 1 9 Dee the elder provided excellent opportunities for his son to study. He had been a student at Westminster school as early as in 1592; later he continued his studies at the medical schools of Oxford and Cambridge. He is supposed to have earned his medical diploma in Manchester; at any rate he is mentioned on a certificate of merit of the university of Basle as doctor medicinae. 2 0 He started his medical practice in London and continued there until 1621. Though his father John Dee had brought upon himself the grudge of King James I. which disfavour accompanied him until the last days of his life, his son enjoyed the full confidence of the same king, so much so that he rose among the ranks of the courtphysicians. In 1621 two envoys of Tsar Mihail Fiodorovitsh, Yurij Rodionov and Andreÿ Kerkerlin, appeared at the English court and asked the king to send along an experienced and excellent physician to Moscow. The choice fell upon Arthur Dee, who appeared on a visit of introduction before the Tsar on 8 September 1621. The activity of Arthur Dee —known in Russia as Artemii Ivanovich Dii — in the Tsar's court is outside the scope of our paper, since N. A. Figurovski treated this topic in his work in detail. It is, however, worth while to dwell a little longer on Dee's work released in Paris in 1631 under the title "Fasciculus Chemicus". Regarding this work we are of the opinion that the strictly alchemist part of the text can be traced back in the last analysis to the "Corpus Alchimisticum", which is a collection of Egyptian and ancient Greek alchemist manuscripts compiled similarly to the "Corpus Hyppocraticum". It originates from the 7th — 8th centuries. Several variants of the same collection are known from the 9th century onwards. The oldest manuscript-collection was written by a Byzantine alchemist, named Theodorøs. The manuscript came into the hands of Cardinal Bessarion who donated it to the Venetian Republic in 1463. Today it can be found in the San Marco Library in Venice. A 15th century copy of this Greek Marçianųs Codex is kept at the library of Kassel. The manuscript has a fascinating history: in April 1567 John Dee bought the so-called Oxford alchemist manuscripts from Jean Baptist Hardencourt, as is testified by the note made on the first page of the codex which reads: "Johannes Dee interfere in the machinations of diplomacy which is also proved by his strictly confidential letter to Don Guillén San Clemente, ambassador of Philip II and afterwards Philip III Spanish kings in Prague, written in Prague on 28. September 1584. Correspondencia inédita de Don Guillén de San Clemente. Zaragoza, 1892, pp. 215-218. 1 8 Figurovski, N. A. op. cit. p. 42. 1 9 Istorya meditsiny v Rossii. Vol. II. Moscow, 1820, pp. 24-34. 2 0 For the biography of Arthur Dee see the Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Vol. V., pp. 719 — 720. and Figurovski, N. A. op. cit. p. 42.
