John Halle

John Halle, oder John Hall of Maidstone (* um 1529; † um 1566), war ein englischer Chirurg, Dichter und Autor medizinischer Abhandlungen.

Werke

• Certayne Chapters taken out of the Proverbes of Solomon, with other Chapters of the Holy Scripture, and certayne Psalmes of David, translated into English Metre, London (Thomas Raynalde), 1549.
• Poesie in Forme of a Vision, briefly inveying against the most hatefull and prodigious artes of Necromancie, Witchcraft, Sorcerie, Incantations, and divers other detestable and deuilishe practises, dayly used under colour of Judiciall Astrologie, London, 1563.
• The Court of Vertue, contayning many Holy or Spretuall Songes, Sonnettes, Psalmes, Balletts, and Shorte Sentences, as well of Holy Scripture, as others, with musical notes, London, 1565. This book seems by the prologue to have been written to contrast with The Court of Venus, a collection of love songs. Dedicated to Thomas Cole.
• A most excellent and learned woorke of chirurgerie, called Chirurgia parva Lanfranci, Lanfranke of Mylayne his briefe: reduced from dyvers translations to our vulgar-frase, and now first published in the Englyshe prynte, black letter, 4 pts., London, 1565. Translation from Lanfranc of Milan. It contains a woodcut portrait of the translator, "æt. 35, 1564". Appended were two other works: A very frutefull and necessary briefe worke of Anatomie; and An Historiall Expostulation: Against the beastlye Abusers, both of Chyrurgerie, and Physyke, in oure tyme: with a goodlye Doctrine and Instruction, necessarye to be marked and folowed, of all true Chirurgiens, reprinted in volume 11 of the publications of the Percy Society, London, 1844, edited by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew. Halle denounced in the latter the quacks of the day, and opposed the combination of magic, divination, and physic.
• A metrical version of The Prouerbes of Salamon, thre chapters of Ecclesiastes, the sixthe chapter of Sapientia, the ix chapter of Ecclesiasticus, and certayne psalmes of Dauid, London (Edward Whitchurch), n. d., dedicated to John Bricket, esq., of Eltham. Halle complained that chapters of the Book of Proverbs, translated by him into English metre, 1550, had been attributed to Thomas Sternhold.
• English translation of Benedict Victorius Faventinus's and Niccolò Massa's treatises De Morbo Gallico; Cure of the French Disease, a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which also contains letters from Halle to William Cuningham.

Commendatory verses, in English, prefixed to Thomas Gale's Enchiridion of Chirurgerie, 1563, and to the same author's Institution of a Chirurgian, 1563.

Bedeutung

Ein Abschnitt aus der Historicall Expostulation findet sich als Ratschlag und Vorwort des Abschnitts Medical Consultation Secrets im Buch Medical Secrets und kann durchaus als zeitlos für das Konsilwesen von Ärzten gelten:

„When thou arte callde at anye time
A patient to see
And dost perceave the cure too grate
And ponderous for thee:

See that thou laye disdeyne aside
And pride of thyne owne skyll:
And thinke no shame counsell to take
But rather wyth good wyll.

Gette one or two of experte men
To help thee in that nede
And make them partakers wyth thee
In that work to procede....

But one thinge note, when two ore moe
Together joygned be;
Aboute the paynfull patient
See that ye doe agree

See that no discorde doe arise
Nor be at no debate;
For that shall sore discomforte hym
That is in syck estate....

For noughte can more discomforte him
That lies in griefe and peyne,
Then heare that one of you dothe bare
To other such disdeine.“