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)

Z. Kádár: Some Notes on the Common Archetypes of Pharmaco-Zoological Illustrations in the MSS. Cotton Vitellius C., III. and the Greek Theriaca

Z. Kádár : Some Notes on the Common Archetypes

. 8? illuminated. Among the pictures we do not find any representation of plants only that of snakes and scorpions which are named. In both the earlier codex deriving from the 6th century (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Cod. med. gr. 1.) and the later one dating back to the 10th century (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Cod. M. 652) the way the snakes are dealt with is far more rigid than in the Paris codex. These illustrations must be assigned to much the same date as the paraphrase, i.e. the 4th — 5th centuries. Only a few pictures reveal a more vivid representation of nature, e.g. the scenes representing the asp, the fighting echidna (fig. 1.), and the miniature showing the fight of the asp and ichneumon (Herpestes ichneumon) in Fol, 345 of the New York codex Fig. 3. New York, Morgan Lib. Cod. M, 652. Fol. 345v (fig. 4). Its style is fairly close to that of an Alexandrine Hellenistic mosaic in Roman art. It may be assumed that the artist of this pictures owed in a clear depth to an earlier codex which

—on the other hand

—might have been created on the basis of Apollodoros's work. (For the detailed description of the fight see Nie., Ther. 190-208.) Comparing the snake and scorpion representations of the Codex Cott. Vitellius C., Ill, of London with those of the above mentioned manuscripts we may come to the following surprising conclusions: though the snakes of the London codex are rather conventional, nevertheless, their dinamic representation is completely different from the "stick"-like snakes shown in the paraphrases. They can be related only to the echidna picture quoted above as an exception. The scene represents two fighting snakes where the one which comes out on top bites the head of the other one off (Cott. Vit. C. III. fol. 29

v: fig. 2). Among the miniatures of the London codex there is a picture representing the fight between the asp and ichneumon (Fo. 27

v: fig. 5). The illuminator did not now the Alexandrine Hellenistic archetype and instead of an ichneumon ha paints a dog which, however, seems an explicable misunderstanding. Further-