Bøger i Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean serien

This book presents an edition of the Questiones super libro ¿De Animalibus¿ Aristotelis, a work by one of the greatest philosophers and physicians of the 13th century, Peter of Spain. Preceding the critical edition, Navarro offers an introduction to Peter of Spain and a short analysis of the linguistics and form of the Questiones. She also analyses the sources on which Peter drew, Greco-Latin, Arabo-Jewish and, of course, late antique and medieval treatises, showing that the text was not exclusively zoological in nature, but discusses important medical and philosophical topics, illustrating his extensive knowledge of both the Aristotelian corpus and 13th-century medicine.

Galen's "Critical Days" ("De diebus decretoriis") was a founding text of astrological medicine. This title presents the Arabic translation of Galen's "Critical Days", together with the translation of the text into a modern language.

An English translation of a medical notebook belonging to a traditional healer from the village of Meronas in central Crete, Nikolaos Konstantinos Theodorakis. It belongs to the genre of latrosophia: practical manuals of collected healing wisdom, dating mainly from the 17th to 19th centuries.

Daily life and living conditions in the Byzantine world are relatively underexplored subjects, often neglected in comparison with more visible aspects of Byzantine culture, such as works of art. The author focuses on the interaction between physiology, culture and the environment in Byzantine populations from Crete in the 7th to 12th centuries.

Brings together eleven papers by leading scholars in ancient and medieval medicine and pharmacy. This volume honors Professor John M Riddle, one of the most respected medieval historians, whose career has been devoted to decoding the complexities of early medicine and pharmacy.

Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West brings together eleven papers by leading scholars in ancient and medieval medicine and pharmacy. Fittingly, the volume honors Professor John M. Riddle, one of today''s most respected medieval historians, whose career has been devoted to decoding the complexities of early medicine and pharmacy. "Herbs" in the title generally connotes drugs in ancient and medieval times; the essays here discuss interesting aspects of the challenges scholars face as they translate and interpret texts in several older languages. Some of the healers in the volume are named, such as Philotas of Amphissa, Gariopontus, and Constantine the African; many are anonymous and known only from their treatises on drugs and/or medicine. The volume''s scope demonstrates the breadth of current research being undertaken in the field, examining both practical medical arts and medical theory from the ancient world into early modern times. It also includes a paper about a cutting-edge Internet-based system for ongoing academic collaboration. The essays in this volume reveal insightful research approaches and highlight new discoveries that will be of interest to the international academic community of classicists, medievalists, and early-modernists because of the scarcity of publications objectively evaluating long-lived traditions that have their origin in the world of the ancient Mediterranean.

The lack of reliable demographic data for Byzantine cities raises questions as to the actual rate of expansion and mortality of plague. This essentially leads to the question of change and progress of the nature of infectious diseases in that period. Also, the analysis of the written sources raised a series of questions, mainly epidemiological in nature: the entry points and spreading of the disease in the Mediterranean, the epidemic dynamics as well as the evolution of the microbial agent of plague, i.e. Yersinia pestis. The present study offers a substantial explanation for the outbreaks of plague that struck Byzantium by exploring the multiple factors that caused or triggered epidemics. The study covers the entire period extending from the beginning of the Byzantine Empire until its fall in 1453, which was marked by two major pandemics, namely the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. All known primary sources were collected and grouped from a spatiotemporal perspective, so as to retrace the unfolding of the two pandemics. The focus of the research shifts from known historical frameworks to ones of human activities, endemic foci and natural environment of the era as risk factors of the outbreaks.

The arterial pulse was a major aspect of all three major medical traditions - Western, Chinese and Indian. Galen's extant works are the only significant account of Western views surviving from ancient times. Not only does he set out his own views in great detail but he also gives a large amount of information on the views of others whose writings are lost. In the translated treatises in the present work, Galen deals with basic anatomy and physiology, classification of the types of pulses, diagnosis of and from the pulses, causal factors of clinical relevance and the very important matter of the prognostic value of the pulses. This is the first translation into a modern Western language of Galen's very substantial body of work on this subject.

This book considers the introduction of materialist and physiological reasoning into late medieval discourse on the soul in the work of Peter of Abano (d.1316); in this, it adds a vital component to our understanding of this important period in the history of medicine and of the philosophy of human nature. Peter was an influential physician and philosopher whose activities spanned from Paris to Padua to Constantinople, where he played a vital role in the appropriation of Greek and Arabic medical and natural philosophical sources in the Latin West. In his engagement with these sources, he sought a "reconciliation" (as his most famous work, the Conciliator, was titled) of medicine and philosophy. Through this reconciliation, Peter develops a rich description of the integration of physical and spiritual operations, and of physiological and mental capacities, leading him to discussions of imagination, moral virtues, and intellectual powers. Because Peter developed many of his ideas within a traditional medical framework, he created a distinctively "medical" anthropology. His unique understanding of human nature would remain influential for centuries to come.