Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean

Recent studies have underlined the importance of consulting different sources to trace global histories of diseases. However, due to a lack of critical editions of medical works, leprosy is poorly understood, and a wider interpretation of it as a historical phenomenon is yet to be proposed.

Building on a broad critical editing and analysis of Arabic and Latin texts, this book traces a new history of leprosy moving from late antiquity to the Islamic and Latin Middle Ages, thus proving the necessity of a comparative approach to grasp its Mediterranean scope. Challenging established historical reconstructions, this study demonstrates that Arabic texts were familiar with a scientific approach to contagiousness. It also shows how, when faced with the diffusion of leprosy as an endemic disease, Latin physicians tried to solve the enigma of its nature avoiding any moral censorship. Each chapter includes the relevant texts, all related to al-Maǧūsī’s encyclopedia Kitāb al-Malakī (10^th c.), in critical edition with an English translation.

The book aims to contribute historians from different areas with a realistic picture of how theoretical, learned medicine considered leprosy, opening the possibility of broader research on other sources.

In De tremore, rigore, palpitatione, et convulsione liber, a forgotten work preserved in ten Greek manuscripts and in some medieval translations into Latin, Galen described four types of abnormal involuntary movements: tremor, rigor, palpitation, and spasm. De tremore provides the first detailed description of these movement disorders in the western medical tradition and it became one of the most quoted and influential texts in the history of neurology and neuropathology (e.g., Parkinson and MS).

Galen’s questions about the nature of these neurological conditions are still relevant today and some of them have not been resolved yet. Furthermore, De tremore represents an authoritative source for understanding some key concepts of ancient neurophysiology and the legacy of humoral theory in the history of western medicine (e.g., motor impulse, innate heat, psychic pneuma, voluntary motions, etc.).

This volume offers a new complete critical edition of the Galenic text, with an introduction, English translation, commentary, reception history and indices.

Volume five of the Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs (CMAG), published in 1928, was devoted to the manuscripts of Spain and those held in the libraries of Athens. In its second part, compiled by Albert Severyns, five manuscripts were listed, in total. Only three of them were described.

The present publication lists and describes a large number of manuscripts, currently held in Greek libraries, which were not included in the 5th volume of CMAG. It also provides a new description of the three manuscripts described by Severyns. In addition to manuscript descriptions, it contains an Appendix, which offers the full transcription of short unpublished tracts, tables, variant readings from the printed editions, and other items that might prove useful for the history of alchemy.

Besides being a de facto supplement to CMAG, this catalogue may contribute to the current revival of interest in the history of Graeco-Egyptian alchemy. It brings to light primary sources, previously unnoticed, that are valuable pieces in the dynamic mosaic of a field of knowledge, i.e. alchemy, the historical mutations of which had considerable impact on the evolution of a variety of other disciplines, ranging from metallurgy to philosophy and medicine

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.

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.

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.