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A paper manuscript copy of the Circa instans attributed to Platearius, without illustrations, written possibly in Germany in the 1440s-1450s.
Contents:
ff. 1r-69r: Circa instans or Liber de simplici medicina, in Latin, a late 12th-century pharmacopoeial and therapeutic compilation attributed to a physician operating in the milieu of the School of Salerno, known under the name of Platearius. The text in the present manuscript is identifiable with the first version of variant B (versio B) of the Circa instans, including between 250 and 277 chapters and testified in approximately 133 manuscripts produced between the last decades of the 12th and the late 15th century: I. Ventura, 'Il Circa instans attribuito a Platearius: trasmissione manoscritta, redazioni, criteri di costruzione di un'edizione critica', Revue d'histoire des textes, 10 (2015), pp. 251-362 (in particular pp. 261-6; with mention of the present manuscript on pp. 265, 302, 337); eadem, 'Un best-seller farmaceutico medioevale tra produzione di libri e pratiche di lettura: il Circa instans attribuito a Platearius', in Orbis disciplinae. Hommages en l'honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. N. Bouloux, A. Dan and G. Tolias (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 628-30.
Listed in eTK, A digital resource based on Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy, 1963; with supplements in 1965 and 1968; online at https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Books#etk), as no. 211C*. For the text, see G. Keil, 'Circa instans', in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon (Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 1978-), vol. 1 (1978), cols. 1282-5.
 First printed with the Latin translations of the Breviarium medicinae of Serapion the Elder and In medicinis simplicibus of Serapion the Younger, together with Galen's De virtute centaureae and Johannes Platearius's Practica brevis, in Venice by Bonetus Locatellus, for Octavianus Scotus, 16 Dec. 1497 (ISTC is00466000), signatures z8r-[rum]8v, i.e. pp. 186r-211v.
For other manuscript copies of the compilation in the Wellcome Library, see MSS 536 (England?, late 13th century), 547, ff. 192r-215v (France or England, 14th century), and 625, ff. 1r-21r (excerpts on herbs from the Circa instans, Germany, mid 15th century); for an illustrated copy of its French adaptation, see MS. 626, ff. 1r-261r (France, c. 1470).
The present manuscript was probably copied in Germany in the 1440s-1450s and includes 277 chapters. It has been identified by Iolanda Ventura as belonging to a particular redaction of the text, called by her 'redazione Göttingen' from the location of the first manuscript in which she found this particular number and ordering of the chapters, i.e. Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, MS. Hist. Nat. 12, a copy produced in Italy in the 14th century. The redaction is characterised by the addition of chapters to the section devoted to simples with Latin names beginning with 'S'; in the present manuscript, the additional entries, entitled De salice, De sambuco, De squilla, De storace, De sumac, De staphisagria, De sandalisi, are found between those entitled De serpentaria and De sene on ff. 65v-66v: see I. Ventura, 'Il Circa instans attribuito a Platearius …', pp. 279-80, with mention of the present manuscript on pp. 302, 337 no. 53, 353.
f. 1r: Incipit: Incipit liber magistri Johannis platearii // [C]Irca instans negotium de simplicibus medicinis nostrum uersatur propositum ...
f. 69r: Explicit: ... Nec vero presentis operis prolixitas in incensum diffundatur hoc leto fine concludamus istud. Explicit liber iste.

Circa instans

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