Introduction: The Transfer of Pharmacological Knowledge in Late Antiquity (original) (raw)
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This study set out to test the hypothesis that specific elements of Assyro-Babylonian medical therapy were present in the medical/pharmacological literature of the Early Roman Empire (1st-2nd centuries CE), a hypothesis that had hitherto been unexplored by comparative scholarship. The investigation was conducted by analysing the materia medica (versus other aspects, such as disease concepts or formal structure) of the two cultures, and in particular Dreckapotheke-ingredients, the medicinal efficacy of which is, physically speaking, inexplicable. In so doing, textual connections or interactions that could ultimately validate the research hypothesis were sought. In the first chapter, the main objectives of the dissertation are introduced, the chronological and geographical boundaries of the sources delineated, and the term Dreckapotheke defined. Here the methodology of focusing on animal-based ingredients as a way around the major obstacles inherent in the field is discussed and justified, and finally a brief history of previous related scholarship is provided. The next chapter (Ch. 2) sketches the main evidence for contacts and cross-cultural transmission of ideas between the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and the Greek and Roman world in order to provide a plausible context into which to situate the transfer of medical knowledge. This is followed in Chapter 3 by some reflections about how scholars in Babylonia and in the Early-Roman Empire perceived and dealt with the ambiguity conveyed by Dreckapotheke-like ingredients. Nine case studies are then presented, in which the same (puzzling) medical ingredients are identified as being prescribed for the cure of the same symptoms in both Babylonian and Graeco-Roman therapeutical literature. The cases discussed are almost certainly not coincidental, justifying the theory of a transfer of traditional knowledge concerning the use of these drugs. Next, an edition of the cuneiform pharmacological list Uruanna III, lines 1-143 (138) is provided in Chapter 4, as this list of drug names was a crucial tool to develop various hypotheses in the thesis. This text has previously been thought to be a list of secret names, but its analysis indicates that the redactors instead attempted to group together non-canonical/alias names of drugs as part of a large-scale project aimed at reorganizing and systematizing the nomenclature of pharmacological substances (which interpretation, it is pointed out, is corroborated by the colophon itself). The fifth and final chapter concludes that similarities between Babylonian and Greek and Roman medicine are not only to be found in the general structure of the recipes or in a handful of more or less singular healing methods (as was previously argued), but also in the use of specific medical ingredients. Additionally, some elements of Babylonian medical knowledge are shown to have filtered into the West not only before the Greek Archaic period, as is usually believed, but also at a later date through other avenues. Finally, it is argued that some of the Dreckapotheke names found in Graeco-Roman medical compendia are likely to have reflected more ancient practices and traditions, in which these names were not to be interpreted literally, but rather were aliases of real medicinal plants. The implications of these findings are far reaching, and more discoveries await future research.
In this volume a distinguished international team of scholars examines the history of drugs within all the major medical traditions of the medieval Mediterranean, namely Byzantine, Islamicate, Jewish, and Latin, and in so doing analyses a considerable number of previously unedited or barely explored texts. A Mediterranean-wide perspective permits a deeper understanding of broader phenomena such as the transfer of scientific knowledge and cultural exchange, by looking beyond single linguistic traditions or political boundaries. It also highlights the diversity and vitality of the medieval Mediterranean pharmacological tradition, which, through its close links with cookery, alchemy, magic, religion and philosophy, had to be able to adapt to multiple contexts, not least to changing social and political realities, as in the case of drugs as diplomatic gifts. Medieval mediterranean pharmacology Petros Bouras-Vallianatos; Part I. Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge: Texts and Contexts: 1. Ibn al-Tilmīdh's Book on Simple Drugs: a Christian physician from Baghdad on the Arabic, Greek, Syriac, and Persian nomenclature of plants and minerals Fabian Käs; 2. Drugs, provenance, and efficacy in early medieval Latin medical recipes Jeffrey Doolittle; 3. De sexaginta animalibus: AaLatin translation of an Arabic Manāfiʿ al-ḥayawān text on the pharmaceutical properties of animals Kathleen Walker-Meikle; 4. Arabic terms in Byzantine Materia Medica: oral and textual transmission Maria Mavroudi; 5. The theriac of medieval al-Shām Zohar Amar, Yaron Serri, and Efraim Lev; 6. 'Already Verified'-A Hebrew herbal between text and illustration Sivan Gottlieb; Part II. The Borders of Pharmacology: 7. Making magic happen: understanding drugs as therapeutic substances in later Byzantine sorcery and beyond Richard Greenfield; 8. Remedies or superstitions: Maimonides on Mishnah Shabbat 6:10 Phillip I. Lieberman; 9. When the doctor is not around: Arabic-Islamic self-treatment manuals as cultured people's guides to medico-pharmacological knowledge. The Mamluk period (1250-1517) Paulina B. Lewicka; 10. Digestive syrups and after dinner drinks-food or medicine? Leigh Chipman; 11. Late Byzantine alchemical recipe books: metallurgy, pharmacology, and cuisine Matteo Martelli; 12. Making connections between the medical properties of stones and philosophy in the work of Albertus Magnus Athanasios Rinotas; 13. Healing gifts: the role of diplomatic gift exchange in the movement of Materia Medica between the Byzantine and Islamicate worlds Koray Durak.
In the past, Ancient Egyptian medicinal prescriptions have been the focus of research by scientists from a variety of disciplines, especially Egyptologists, historians of science, physicians, biologists, and pharmacists. Their work considers, in most cases, today’s natural scientific perspective, namely the question whether a remedy may have had an effect in a ‘modern’ sense. Some of the lexicographical works concerning drug or symptom names, are based on such a correlation, proposing a drug or disease name for an untranslatable word in a prescription by evaluating the indications and looking for effective drugs, which could have been available in Ancient Egypt. This paper points in the opposite direction. The aim is to introduce new methodological tools to gain an emic, namely an insider’s, perspective on medicinal prescriptions, by applying an experimental-archaeological perspective and by focussing on manufacturing processes, its terminology and its interrelations with ingredients, symptoms and patients. The paper starts with a pharmacological and philological examination of a prescription against worms, questioning its conventional translation. Afterwards, the new approach is introduced. With the help of three concrete recipe examples, semantic and process-oriented readings of prescription texts as medical re-enactments of symptoms and healing processes will be demonstrated. As a result, we will achieve conceptual structures in order to recover features of previously philologically undetermined drugs and symptoms, and new perspectives that will help to broaden our knowledge of the concepts of Ancient Egyptian ‘physiology’ and ‘pathophysiology’.
Development of Pharmacy In Egypt During Mamluk Age (648-923 Of Hijra / 1250-1517 A.D)
Syrian Herbs and Alternative Medicines and Nutrition Association (SHAMNA), 2013
"Since the beginning of the creation, humanity has suffered from diseases, and tried to treat them using everything was within reach, including botanic, animal, or metallic substances. Neanderthal man had described herbs to treat his parents and relatives; later, the idea was developed to conform with the development of civilization. Al-Razi (860-923 AD) is considered the first scientist who had written about separating pharmacy and medicine. He had scientifically dealt with the idea, explaining the aim of this separation. For more clarification, he had devoted a special section (section 22) in which he said “pharmacy is the knowledge of drugs, and distinguishing them, the good drugs from the bad ones, and the pure drugs from the fake ones”. Later, Abo Al-Raihan Al-Beruni (d. 430/1039 AD) wrote his book “pharmacy in medicine” (al-saydaneh fi al tib); so that, he is considered the first scientist who completely separated pharmacy from medicine, through his indicating that pharmacy became independent of medicine, just as the prosody is separate from the art of poetry, and logic from philosophy. Abo Al-Raihan Al-Beruni defined pharmacy as “ knowing single simples, all their kinds, types, and selected images, and making compounds from drugs as directed by the therapist”. In this way, the first signs for the prominence of pharmacology appeared, the science which I have studied through my research in the Mamluk period in Egypt, to show the different aspects that was associated with the development of this science during this era, and the degree by which it was influenced by the preceding ages, and the civilizations of this era, and the degree to which it had influenced the ages that followed it."
Perplexing Remedies in Ancient Medicine: 'Dreckapotheke' in Mesopotamia and the Graeco Roman World
2024
The topic of a potential relationship between Babylonian and Greco-Roman medicine has been discussed for a long time, yet it is notoriously difficult to give it flesh and bones by means of concrete examples. The main goal of this study is to identify real elements in the therapeutical traditions of the one system that can be connected to those of the other, which would confirm a certain degree of practical knowledge-sharing between the two cultures. By analyzing Dreckapotheke (filthy medicaments) and similarly perplexing medical ingredients, and by exploiting the concept of misunderstandings in translation, I show how elements of Assyro-Babylonian therapy were still present or emerging in the pharmaceutical compositions of the Early Roman Empire, ultimately supporting the idea of at least occasional transfers of medical knowledge between the two cultures. With its positive findings, this study contributes to a broader reconstruction of the context within which ancient medicine developed. It also finds reciprocal explanations of obscure passages and fuels further questions regarding the medical interrelations/interconnections between these neighboring ancient cultures.
T. Pommerening / W. Bisang (Hgg.): Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times. Sources, Methods, and Theories from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter 2017, 2017
This essay is intended to embark upon a path of method, in which the classifications contained in Ancient Egyptian formulae, or prescriptions, are more closely characterized; their potential for recovering comprehensive and specific concepts of drugs and effects will be discussed. In medical papyri there are four different kinds of classification, depending on focus: 1) classifiers at the end of individual words – a general phenomenon in the Ancient Egyptian language; 2) the increased occurrence of nominal compounds, especially in relation to the names of drugs and illnesses, compounds that are unavoidably connected to the creation of subordinate level categories; 3) systematic list-type sequences of the formula content and the correlations appearing therein; 4) the configuration of chosen formulae within a papyrus. These different means of classification will be more closely determined with respect to their specificities (i.e. type of source, medium, the circle of users and the Duration of use), motivations, types (exclusive or flexible class limits, hierarchizations) and criteria. It can be shown that the classification types 3) and 4) are directly connected to concepts of drugs and effects, but that ascertaining the individual specificities of 1) and 2) in relation to formula texts can reveal the concepts of drugs and effects behind them.