Another of the well-known teachers at Montpellier was Valesco de Taranta. There are the usual variants of his name, his first name being written also Balesco, and his last name sometimes Tharanta. He was a Portuguese who studied in Lisbon, and later in Montpellier, where he taught afterwards and was considered one of the distinguished professors of his day, being for a time chancellor. He became so well known that he was summoned in consultation to the French King Charles VI., and there is some doubt as to whether he did not become his regular physician. One of his works, the "Philonium Pharmaceuticum et Chirurgicum de medendis omnibus, cum internis tum externis, humani corporis affectionibus," had the honour of being printed at Lyons in two editions in 1490, and one at Venice the same year, at Lyons 1500, Venice 1502, Lyons 1516, 1521, 1532, 1535, Venice 1589, and Lyons 1599. It has also been reprinted subsequently in a number of editions, so that it must have been a much-read book. Valesco had two favourite authors, Galen and Guy de Chauliac. The fact that he should have appreciated two such great men so thoroughly is of itself the best evidence of his own ability and critical judgment. His book, from the number of printed editions, must have been in the hands of practically all the progressive physicians of the southern part of France, at least during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and part of the seventeenth centuries. A very well-known teacher of Montpellier, who has had a reputation in English-speaking countries because his name was supposed to indicate that he was a Scotchman, was Bernard Gordon or de Gordon, whose name is, however, also written Gourdon. He was a teacher at Montpellier at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. His textbook of medicine, in accordance with the custom of the time, is called by the flowery title "Lilium Medicinæ," the Lily of Medicine. While much of his information was derived from the Arabs, some of his teaching was an advance on theirs, and he described the acute fevers, leprosy, scabies, anthrax, as well as erysipelas, and still more strangely phthisis, as contagious. Dr. Garrison has called attention in his "History of Medicine" to the fact that the book is notable as containing the first description of a modern truss, and a very early mention of spectacles under the Latin name _oculus berellinus_. In recent years it has come to be the custom to think of Gordon or Gourdon as probably not of Scotch but of French origin--that is, born somewhere in the confines of what we now call France. There are a number of French places of the name of Gourdon from any of which he might have come.