You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection.
Byzantine medicine is the biggest unknown quantity in both the study of medieval medicine and science and in Byzantine studies. This volume aims to redress this gap by presenting the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of John Zacharias Aktouarios, arguably the most important Late Byzantine physician.
Byzantine medicine remains a little known and misrepresented field not only in the context of debates on medieval medicine, but also among Byzantinists themselves. It is often viewed as 'stagnant' and mainly preserving ancient ideas, and our knowledge of it continues to be based to a great extent on the comments of earlier authorities, which are often repeated uncritically. This volume presents the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of, arguably, the most important Late Byzantine physician: John Zacharias Aktouarios (c.1275-c.1330). Its main thesis is that John's medical works show an astonishing degree of openness to knowledge from outside Byzantium combined with a signif...
This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection.
This chapter explores the use and adaptation of the Galenic corpus in the hands of late antique medical compilers. It is divided into two main sections dealing with Greek and Latin authors respectively.
Leprosy has afflicted humans for thousands of years. It wasn't until the twelfth century, however, that the dreaded disease entered the collective psyche of Western society, thanks to a frightening epidemic that ravaged Catholic Europe. The Church responded by constructing charitable institutions called leprosariums to treat the rapidly expanding number of victims. As important as these events were, Timothy Miller and John Nesbitt remind us that the history of leprosy in the West is incomplete without also considering the Byzantine Empire, which confronted leprosy and its effects well before the Latin West. In Walking Corpses, they offer the first account of medieval leprosy that integrates ...
With a clear comparative approach, this volume brings together for the first time contributions that cover different periods of the history of ancient pharmacology, from Greek, Byzantine, and Syriac medicine to the Rabbinic-Talmudic medical discourses. This collection opens up new synchronic and diachronic perspectives in the study of the ancient traditions of recipe-books and medical collections. Besides the highly influential Galenic tradition, the contributions will focus on less studied Byzantine and Syriac sources as well as on the Talmudic tradition, which has never been systematically investigated in relation to medicine. This inquiry will highlight the overwhelming mass of information about drugs and remedies, which accumulated over the centuries and was disseminated in a variety of texts belonging to distinct cultural milieus. Through a close analysis of some relevant case studies, this volume will trace some paths of this transmission and transformation of pharmacological knowledge across cultural and linguistic boundaries, by pointing to the variety of disciplines and areas of expertise involved in the process.
"Adopts a pan-Mediterranean approach to the study of medieval medicine and pharmacology, which permits a deeper understanding of broader phenomena such as the transfer of scientific knowledge and cultural exchange. Of great importance to medical historians, medieval historians and scholars of Byzantine, Islamicate, Jewish, and Latin traditions"--
Explores the literary texts produced during Byzantine Iconoclasm and their use as ideological tools by the main political circles.
The works of Galen of Pergamum (c. 129-216 CE) were fundamental in the shaping of medicine, philosophy, and neighboring areas of knowledge from antiquity through to the middle ages and early modern times, across a variety of languages and cultures. Yet as early as Galen's own lifetime, spurious treatises crept into the body of his authentic works, despite his best efforts to provide the public with a catalogue of his own production (De libris propriis). For centuries, readers and scholars have used a fluid body of Galenic works, shaped by changing intellectual frameworks and social-cultural contexts. Several inauthentic works have enjoyed remarkable popularity, but this has had consequences ...