Nostradamus Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Works== <!-- Courtesy note per [{WP:RSECT]]: [[The Prophecies]] redirects here. --> [[File:Nostradamus prophecies.jpg|thumb|right|Copy of [[Theophilus de Garencières|Garencières]]' 1672 English translation of the ''Prophecies'', located in The P.I. Nixon Medical History Library of The [[University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio]]]] In ''The Prophecies'' Nostradamus compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. The first installment was published in 1555 and contained 353 [[quatrain]]s. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but now survives as only part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. This version contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called "Centuries". Given printing practices at the time (which included type-setting from dictation), no two editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to find even two copies that are exactly the same. Certainly there is no warrant for assuming—as would-be "code-breakers" are prone to do—that either the spellings or the punctuation of any edition are Nostradamus's originals.{{sfn|Brind'Amour|1993|pp=14, 435}} The ''Almanacs'', by far the most popular of his works,{{sfn|Brind'Amour|1993|pp=22–33}} were published annually from 1550 until his death. He often published two or three in a year, entitled either ''Almanachs'' (detailed predictions), ''Prognostications'' or ''Presages'' (more generalised predictions). Nostradamus was not only a [[Divination|diviner]], but a professional healer. It is known that he wrote at least two books on medical science. One was an extremely free translation (or rather a paraphrase) of ''The Protreptic'' of [[Galen]] (''Paraphrase de C. GALIEN, sus l'Exhortation de Menodote aux estudes des bonnes Artz, mesmement Medicine''), and in his so-called ''[[Traité des fardemens]]'' (basically a medical cookbook containing, once again, materials borrowed mainly from others), he included a description of the methods he used to treat the plague, including bloodletting, none of which apparently worked.<ref>Nostradamus (1555–57), p. 11.</ref> The same book also describes the preparation of cosmetics. A manuscript normally known as the ''[[Orus Apollo]]'' also exists in the [[Lyon]] municipal library, where upwards of 2,000 original documents relating to Nostradamus are stored under the aegis of Michel Chomarat. It is a purported translation of an ancient Greek work on [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] based on later Latin versions, all of them unfortunately ignorant of the true meanings of the ancient Egyptian script, which was not correctly deciphered until [[Champollion]] in the 19th century.{{sfn|Lemesurier|2003|p=183}} Since his death, only the ''Prophecies'' have continued to be popular, but in this case they have been quite extraordinarily so. Over two hundred editions of them have appeared in that time, together with over 2,000 commentaries. Their [[Nostradamus in popular culture|persistence in popular culture]] seems to be partly because their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits".{{sfn|Lemesurier|2003|pp=144–145}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page