bottom. A number of the practical hints for treatment given by Afflacius
have been attributed to Constantine.

Constantine's reputation has, in the opinion of some writers, been hurt
by two features of his published works, as they have come to us, that we
find it difficult to understand. One of these is that his translations
from the Arabic were made mainly not of the books of the great leaders
of Arabian medicine, but from certain of the less important writers. The
other is that it does not seem always to have been made clear in the
manuscripts that have come down to us, whether these writings were
translations or original writings. Some have even gone so far as to
suggest that Constantine himself would have been quite willing to
receive the credit for these writings.

As to the first of these objections, it may be said that very probably
Constantine, in his travels, had come to realize that the books of the
great Arabian physicians, Rhazes, Abulcasis, Avicenna, and others,
already received so much attention that the best outlook for medicine
was to call particular notice to the writings of such lesser lights as
Ali Abbas, Isaac Judaeus, Abu Dschafer, and others of even less note.
Certainly we cannot but feel that his judgment in the matter must have
been directed by reasons that we may not be able to understand at
present, but that must have existed, for all that we know of the man
proves his character as a practical, far-sighted scholar. Besides, it
seems not unlikely that but for his interest in them we would not at the
present time possess the translations of these minor Arabian writers,
and that would be an unfortunate gap in medical history.

The other misunderstanding with regard to Constantine refers to the fact
that it is now almost impossible to decide which are his own and which
are the writings of others. It has been said that he even tried to palm
off some of the writings of others as his own. This seems extremely
unlikely, however, knowing all that we do about his life; and the
suspicion is founded entirely on manuscripts as we have them at the
present time, about a thousand years after he lived. What mutilations
these manuscripts underwent in the course of various copyings is hard
now to estimate. Monastic copyists might very well have left out Arabian
names, because they were mainly interested in the fact that they were
providing for their readers works that had received the approval of
Constantine,