Representing the Medicine in 6th century Constantinople: Pharmacological Illustrations of Plants and the Image of an Aristocratic Patron in Codex Aniciae Iulianae (original) (raw)
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Παρεκβολαί / Parekbolai, 2017
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to introduce, edit and translate an unpublished fragment of Byzantine medical writing. Parisinus suppl. gr. 607 preserves a short and seemingly acephalous anthology of pharmaceutical remedies. A consideration of recipe collections as a distinctive but hard-to-define species of Byzantine Fachliteratur seeks to integrate this text into recent scholarship concerning a broad category of informal therapeutic writings, which testify to Byzantine drug lore, clinical practice and medicinal book culture. Investigation of the codicological structure clarifies that a secondary hand copied the fragment onto a blank folio in the mid-tenth century, contemporary with the compilation of this manuscript in a high socio-cultural and intellectual milieu in Constantinople. Examination of compositional contexts, embracing philological, textual, literary-historical and medical dimensions, suggests a ‘private’ remedy collection indicative of the use of texts in ‘household medicine’. This fragment draws particular attention as one of the earliest surviving specimens, while the codex has escaped the notice of previous inventories of Greek manuscripts with medical content.
Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2011
The Chilandar Medical Codex is the most significant and best preserved medieval Serbian manuscript and collects together documents on European medical science from the 12th to 15th centuries. It represents the best-known and most complete example of a large collection of medical manuscripts from the Salerno-Montpellier school, written in the vernacular-something which does not exist among the majority of European nations. This paper presents the section of the Codex that deals with phytotherapy, which is contained within the pharmacological manuscripts. An analysis of their contents shows that out of a total of 167 recorded substances, 135 are of plant origin (81%), 13 animal origin (7.7%) and 19 inorganic (11.3%). The recorded plant species are categorised into 63 families, of which the most frequent are: Apiaceae (8.1%), Lamiaceae (8.1%), Asteraceae (5.9%), Rosaceae (5.9%) and Fabaceae (4.4%). All possible plant parts were used in treatments: the whole plant (6%), underground parts (13.7%-root, rhizome, bulb) and aerial parts (80.3%stem, leaf, flower, buds, fruit, seeds). Of the plants quoted, the following are mentioned most frequently: Vitis sp. (120), Rosa canina (55), Olea europaea (45), Pistacia lentiscus (25), Saccharum officinarum (23), Artemisia absinthium (16) and Foeniculum vulgare (15). The contents of the pharmacological manuscripts of the Chilandar Medical Codex point to the sound contemporary knowledge of the diversity of plant species, their origins, habitat types, the levels of their healing powers, and when and how to gather them and prepare them, as well as the recommended dose for the treatment of specific illnesses. As these manuscripts contain not only common, lay terms for the plants, but also scientific, botanical ones, we can consider them the precursor to Serbian botany. Based on its contents and the way in which they are presented, it can be viewed not only as the first Serbian pharmacopeia, but first Slavic pharmacopeia, too, because similar manuscripts written in the vernacular did not exist during that period among the other Slavic nations, or even most European nations.
This article analyses the botanical material that is contained in the Iatrosophikon, a collection of prescriptions from a monastery in Cyprus written down during the island's Ottoman period . A total of 494 herbal prescriptions were detected in the record and 231 plants belonging to 70 different botanical families, as well as 21 various substances of botanical or mixed origin were identified. The distribution of the plants, the plant part used, the use of the material, and the mode of application are discussed. Parallels with other medical writings of the Greek-speaking Ottoman world suggest a local popular as well as a classical Greek and Byzantine influence. The latter is particularly supported by the relationship of the majority of the plants described to plants mentioned by Dioscorides. Additionally the question of what other sources might have contributed to this herbal knowledge is discussed. The results also show that most of the plants described originated from the island itself, only a minority of the botanical material presumably had to be imported. All the mentioned plants of local origin are also cited in modern ethnopharmacological studies on Cyprus, the Iatrosophikon demonstrates their use at a time from which no other written source of comparable detail exists.
Starting from the two major authorities (auctoritates) of Ancient and Medieval pharmacology, Dioscorides and Galen, my paper provides an overview of the systems of classification of medicamina simplicia derived from plants, animals, metals, and precious stones as recorded in the Latin pharmacological literature from Late Antiquity until the middle of the 12th century, including its intellectual and philosophical background as it determines the rational criteria that regulate the acquisition of knowledge and the systematic ordering and structuring of such medicamina according to their nature, their effect, and their therapeutical properties. In three chronologically structured paragraphs, the paper first examines the two main pharmacological texts written during the Antiquity, viz. Dioscorides' De materia medica and Galen's De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus. From there, it moves on to the main types of pharmacological collections produced in the Late Antiquity, the so-called Antibalomena, Dynamidia, and Quid pro quo lists. The period of transition from Late Antiquity to the first centuries of the Middle Ages was marked by the redaction of some well known herbals that will dominate over the Latin pharmacological literature until at least the end of the 12th century, viz. the spurious Alphabetum Galeni, the Herbarium attributed to the Pseudo-Apuleius, and the medical poem De viribus herbarum written by Odo of Meung, but better known under the title of 'Macer floridus'. The main contribution to the perception and classification of natural elements provided by those works lied in the criteria of structuring and ordering nature according to its relevance and use in medicine. In contrast, the Arabic-Latin pharmacological literature reaching the Western world thanks to Con-stantine the African's translations of Al-Majusi's Pantegni and Ibn al-Jazzar's Liber de gradibus provided medieval Latin medicine and pharmacology with a deeper and stronger theoretical background that gave contemporary physicians and medical authors belonging, among others, to the Medical School of Salerno, the chance to reason about the rational criteria and elements of recognition and classification of the nature of medicamina, their qualities, and their effects. The 'theoretical turn' initiated by Constantine's translations and further developed by the authors belonging to, or connected with, the Medical School of Salerno (Bartholomew of Salerno, Platearius, the Magister Salernus, John of Saint-Paul) played therefore a decisive role in the history of rational pharmacology, and will be the object of a long discussion in the third paragraph. My overview ends in the same section with what can be considered the most impressive and influential account of rational pharmacology pro-102 Iolanda Ventura duced and read during the Middle Ages, viz. the first treatise of the second book of Avicenna's Liber canonis, which represented, with the discussion of its long sections on the acquisition of pharmacological knowledge per experimentum and per ratioci-nationem, the most complete, the deepest, and the most problematic and debated pharmacological manual of the Late Middle Ages, whose reception and meaning in Medieval universities was exemplified, among others, by John of Saint-Amand and his pharmacological works. Article published in: Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed T. Pommerening and W. Bisang, Berlin-New York 2017
Introduction: Medicinal Plants in Ancient Traditions
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of the World, 2014
Plants have been used for medicinal purposes since time immemorial, and to this day, many of the important and familiar remedies originate in plants. This chapter outlines the history and early traditions of medicinal plants in the Middle-east. The importance of the early "medicine-men" in ancient cultures, as collectors and healers, is emphasized. Archaeological fi ndings in sites such as Iraq and Babylon, as well as clay tablets and ancient manuscripts from Egypt, Sumaria and Assyria, India and China reveal the immense body of knowledge that existed during these old times in history. A special place is devoted to the Bible, as an ancient document describing the use of plants in this region during biblical times. Since before the Common Era, great herbalists, such as Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Theophrastus and Galenius acted as scientists and therapists leaving us with prominent books, such as De Materia Medica of Dioscorides. This priceless document provided the world with vast knowledge regarding hundreds of medicinal plants which are found in the region of the Middle-East. Most of these plants are still used at the present time for therapy and some of them are rich sources of natural compounds with medicinal properties. It was only by the mid-fi fteenth century that the infl uence of Dioscorides, and that of the classic herbalists, began to fade within European botany and medicine. During this period, and until our times, the European herbalists began researching plants for pure research purposes, which resulted in great scientifi c discoveries. Although there is no doubting the predominance of chemical research in modern medicine, there is a notably increasing interest, within both medical circles and the general public alike, in plant-oriented folk medicine. Further research into the biochemical mechanisms of herbal medicines will enable a synthesis of traditional and modern methods of health care, to the benefi t of all.
The Plant Material of Medicine
2010
The oldest illustrated and most valuable document in the history of pharmaceutical and herbal writing is De materia medica, i.e. materials of medicine, a precursor to the modern pharmacopoeia and one of the most influential herbal books in history of sciences; this work was written by Dioscorides in his native Greek, during the first century AD. Although the original text of Dioscorides herbal has never been found, numerous manuscripts of his work (mostly illustrated) reproduced between 2nd and 15th century AD; however, unlike the original, they contain alphabetically listed plants that have been used for therapy. The first Greek version was published in 1499 and the first Latin version in 1516. It is likely that the first translated manuscript in Arabic appeared during the 9th century. In these texts the presented plant classification is pre-Linnaean. Unlike many classical authors, Dioscorides’ work was not rediscovered in the Renaissance, because the five volume text on materials ...
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2008
This book could have been an important contribution to our knowledge of medieval medicine in a Jewish-Islamic context, as it fits well in with a recent trend to focus on its practical aspect which has been sorely neglected in the past. Unfortunately, though, I must give a highly critical review of its organization, approach and specific entries. The work does not refer to the general classical dictionaries for the technical terminology involved (Greek, Latin, Hebrew), and for Arabic terminology the authors should have consulted Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (hereafter D), 1 Ullmann, Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache (from Kāf on) (WKAS), 2 idem, Wörterbuch zu den griechisch-arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts (2002) (UW), 3 and the two supplement volumes (2006-2007). As to the Hebrew-Aramaic medical terms, they could have used various standard dictionaries. Explicit references to the concrete use of these dictionaries are missing. In the rare case that the reader is given information about the origin of the name of a plant or drug, as on p. 147 for etrog, such information should consist of a proper etymology and reference to the dictionary consulted. In addition to secondary material in the form of dictionaries, one should consult and mention specific studies devoted to the different
Medicine and magic in a recipe of Aspasia, a sixth-century CE Byzantine physician
Pharmaceutical Historian, 2023
Graeco-Roman medicine bequeathed empirical observation as the paradigm for interpreting diseases due to natural causes. Th e eff ectiveness of those treatments has since been investigated. However, magical aspects of treatment largely persisted in European medicine until the end of the eighteenth century. To understand why it is important to know how ancient medical recipes and procedures were used in practice. Th is article analyses a recipe for diffi cult labour recommended by Aspasia, a Byzantine physician from the sixth century CE. It explores the eff ectiveness of the procedures used and breaks down characteristics of the materia medica by use of modern phytochemical studies.