Milk and Dairy Products in the Medicine and Culinary Art of Antiquity and Early Byzantium (1 st -7 th Centuries AD) (original) (raw)
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Milk was a very significant food product in the Mediterranean. The present study is not devoted to milk as such, but to therapeutic galactology, galaktologia iatrike (γαλακτολογία ἰατρική), a version of which is extant in De medicina penned by a Roman encyclopaedist called Celsus. The author places milk and milk-derived products among therapeutic substances, indicates the methods of processing such substances, and also provides the readers with details on dietary and pharmacological characteristics of dairy foods as well as indicating their place in a number of cures. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the characterizations of milk and dairy products with regard to their dietary properties and application as pharmakon (φάρμκον) are not an exclusive feature of De medicina, but they are regularly mentioned not only in medical works, such as De diaeta I–IV, teachings of Dioscorides, extant fragments penned by Rufus of Ephesus, Galen, Oribasius, Aetius of Amida and Paul o...
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The research concerns Roman medical galactology, galaktología iatriké (γαλακτολογία ἰατρική), i.e. the ancient knowledge of milk and its by-products in medical procedures as described by Celsus in his treatise entitled De medicina. The authors elaborate on the sources of Celsus' medical theory of milk, comment on the place of the Roman author's theory against the doctrinal background of other medical writers of the period, demonstrate pharmacological characteristics attributed to milk and milk-obtained products by Celsus, specify main cures in which milk and its by-products were made use of as either simple or compound medicines, give examples of the latter, delineate the progress of the theory on milk's medicinal use, and finally comment on the role of milk and milk-obtained products in the diet of the Mediterranean.
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When approaching the nature of things, Galen of Pergamon tends to use an analytic process based on the relation between different elements interacting in a particular system. With respect to ancient eating habits and health, this way of collecting information and formulating hypotheses has some potential for generating hierarchies and is attested to in De alimentorum facultatibus I, in which foodstuffs are evaluated considering the particular result expected for a subject's metabolism. This paper aims to describe the manner in which a hierarchical construction is made in respect to the qualities of bread. In order to understand how such a method serves Galen's science, it offers a systematization of his commentaries and notes on different kinds of bread and their nutritional properties in the equation: human body condition + (cereal + type of processing) = body reaction.
Health and Culinary Art in Antiquity and Early Byzantium in the Light of "De re Coquinaria
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The article is aimed at indicating and analyzing connections existing between De re coquinaria and medicine. It is mostly based on the resources of extant Greek medical treatises written up to the 7th century A.D. As such it refers to the heritage of the Corpus Hippocraticum, Dioscurides, Galen, Oribasius, Anthimus, Aetius of Amida, Paul of Aegina, to name but the most important. The authors of the study have tried to single out from De re coquinaria those recipes which have the tightest connections with medicine. They are: a digestive called oxyporum, two varieties of dressings based on fish sauce, i.e. oxygarum digestibile and oenogarum, herbal salts (sales conditi), spiced wine (conditum paradoxum), honeyed wine (conditum melizomum viatorum), absinthe (absintium Romanum), rosehip wine (rosatum), a soup (or relish) pulmentarium, a pearl barley-based soup termed tisana vel sucus or tisana barrica, an finally nettles. In order to draw their conclusions, the authors of the article pr...
In the last decades, analysis of human skeletal remains from Greece includes material from previously under-examined time periods, like the Byzantine and post-Byzantine. Although such studies have contributed considerably to our knowledge of the biological profile of these populations, few analyses have dealt with the reconstruction of their diet. Traditionally, dietary patterns have been reconstructed using documentary evidence and/or artistic representations. However, stable isotope analysis of archaeological skeletal remains is an established and powerful method for the reconstruction of dietary behaviour in past populations (e.g., human reliance on marine versus terrestrial foods, or reliance on animal versus vegetable protein). In this paper we will discuss the importance of animal and dairy products in the Byzantine diet, as evidenced by the available-to-date stable isotope analysis.