As to the age of the MS., the translator sets it down about A.D. 900. The sources of the information he ascribes to Oxa, Dun, and Helias; there is a mixture of the Hibernian and Scandinavian elements also. Some of the prescriptions are traceable to Latin writers, and large extracts are made from the Greek physicians. Paulus Ægineta is responsible for the long passage on hiccupings (or Hicket, as the _Leech Book_ calls the malady), as chapter xviii. is almost identical with Paulus Ægin., lib. ii. sect. 57. Mr. Cockayne thinks that the number of passages the Saxon drew from the Greek would make perhaps one-fourth of the first two books. Whether they came direct from the Greek manuscripts or at second hand as quotations, it is not possible to say. Quoting M. Brechillet Jourdain,[645] Mr. Cockayne says that it is shown that the wise men of the Middle Ages long before the invention of printing possessed Latin translations of Aristotle; there is every probability, therefore, that they would be familiar with the works of the Greek physicians. Some of them could translate Greek. If an Italian or Frenchman could acquire Greek and turn it into Latin, a Saxon might do as much. Bede and his disciples could certainly have done so. Bede says that Tobias, Bishop of Rochester, was as familiar with the Greek and Latin languages as with his own. “It appears, therefore,” concludes Mr. Cockayne, “that the leeches of the Angles and Saxons had the means, by personal industry or by the aid of others, of arriving at a competent knowledge of the contents of the works of the Greek medical writers. Here, in this volume, the results are visible. They keep, for the most part, to the diagnosis and the theory; they go back in the prescriptions to the easier remedies; for whether in Galen or others, there was a chapter on the εὐπόριστα, the ‘parabilia,’ the resources of country practitioners, and of course, even now, expensive medicines are not prescribed for poor patients.”[646]