EIKASMOS Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica

Studi Online, 2

MEDICAL BOOKS IN THE BYZANTINE WORLD

EDITED BY

BARBARA ZIPSER

BOLOGNA 2013

Medical books in theByzantine world

edited byBarbara Zipser

Bologna 2013o

Eikasms Online II

ISSN 2282-2178

In memoriam

David Bennett

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

List of figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii

1. Prefatory note: the uses of medical manuscriptsPeregrine Horden (RHUL and Oxford) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Byzantine medicine, genres, and the ravages of timeVivian Nutton (UCL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3. Disease and where to treat it: a Byzantine vade mecumDionysios Stathakopoulos (KCL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4. Two Latin Pre-Salernitan medical manuals, the Liber passionalis andthe Tereoperica (Ps. Petroncellus)Klaus-Dietrich Fischer (Mainz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

5. The fate of a Greek medical handbook in the Medieval West: the Intro-duction, or the Physician ascribed to GalenCaroline Petit (ICS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

6. Aristotle and the Caliphs Dream. Aspects of medical translationsDavid Bennett (formerly NHS and RHUL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

7. Syriac plant names in a fifteenth century Greek glossary (From theWellcome Library Books and Manuscripts)Nikolaj Serikoff (Wellcome Library). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

8. The Reception of Galens Art of medicine in the Syriac Book of medicinesSiam Bhayro (Exeter) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

9. Medieval hospital formularies: Byzantium and Islam comparedPeregrine Horden (RHUL and Oxford) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

10. Cancerous cells, Neanderthal DNA and the tradition of Byzantine me-dicine. Textual criticism in philology and genomicsFlorian Markowetz (Cancer Research UK Cambridge and University ofCambridge) and Barbara Zipser (RHUL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Acknowledgements

This volume originates from a conference on Byzantine Medical Manuals inContext, held in central London on the 19th of September 2009. The confer-ence, which was jointly organized by Peregrine Horden and Barbara Zipser,formed part of a three year project on Byzantine Medical Manuals: Construc-tion and Use based at the Department of History at Royal Holloway Universityof London.

First and foremost we would like to thank the Wellcome Trust for fundingthe project (grant no. 039752) and the conference (089306), and the RHULDepartment of History for providing a supplementary grant for the conference.The volume was copy edited by Barbara Packard. Peregrine Horden helpedwith various proofs. The Wellcome Library kindly allowed us to publish aphotograph of MSL 60. Caroline Buckley provided two illustrations.

We are honoured to be published by Eikasmos, and also extend ourthanks to the anonymous peer reviewers and the editors. Last but not leastwe would like to thank speakers, chairs and audience at the conference, andall those who discussed the topic with us in other settings.

Barbara Zipser, RHUL

xi

List of figures

Cover illustration: Caroline Buckley

Figure 1: Wellcome Library, London, MSL 60, f. 71v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Figure 2: Illustration: Caroline Buckley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

xii

List of abbreviations

ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt

APAW Abh. d. Konigl. Preu. Akademie d. Wiss.

BECh Bibliotheque de lEcole des Chartes

BMCRev Bryn Mawr Classical Review

BRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University of Manchester Library

ByzZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift

DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers

G&R Greece and Rome

HR History of Religions

JOByz Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik

JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

JRA Journal of Roman Archaeology

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society

JWI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

M&S Medicina e Storia

MedSec Medicina nei Secoli

P&P Past and Present

PAA . . .

PG Patrologia Graeca

REByz Revue des Etudes Byzantines

RSO Rivista degli Studi Orientali

StudMed Studi Medievali

WO Die Welt des Orients

Prefatory note: the uses of medical manuscripts

Much of this collection of articles concerns medical texts that seem emi-nently practical or useful.1 But what does either of those adjectives mean?How can historians of medieval Greek medicine, usually working on writingsthat now lack contextual evidence of origins and application, establish crite-ria of usefulness or practicality? Those who study medical remedies of thepre-modern period are often asked by lay, non-specialist audiences in par-ticular did they work? The question usually presupposes a certain kind ofeffectiveness as the yardstick: that of modern, laboratory-based biomedicinewith its high levels of pain relief on which yardstick medieval remedies gen-erally fall short, proving neutral at best.2 In the same way, the question put(in effect) to scholars of medieval medical manuscripts were they used? presupposes a certain vision of the texts Sitz im Leben as providing the solecriterion.3 In effect, if the text did not sit in the consulting room, and if itwas not frequently in the doctors hand, at least between patients and perhapsduring a consultation, it was not practical or useful. What follows is a shortstatement of the obvious contrary position. Just as there are many kinds ofeffect and effectiveness that can be ascribed to remedies,4 so there are manykinds of usefulness with respect to medical texts. In each case we need to

1 The conference from which it derives was indeed conceived as a collectivestudy of Byzantine medieval manuals, or iatrosophia (for the definition of which seeNuttons contribution in this volume). In what follows I am grateful throughout foradvice from Barbara Zipser and Nigel Wilson.

2 See e.g. B. Brennessel-M.D.C. Drout-R. Gravel, A Reassessment of the Ef-ficacy of Anglo-Saxon Medicine, Cambridge 2006, 183-195.

3 To borrow a term from Biblical form criticism.4 E. Hsu, Medical Anthropology, Material Culture, and New Directions in

Medical Archaeology, in P.A. Baker-G. Carr (edd.), Practitioners, Practices and Pa-tients: New Approaches to Medical Archaeology and Anthropology, Oxford 2002, 1-15,

2 HORDEN

separate out the different kinds to arrive at a suitable typology, and we needto try to arrive at criteria for each kind ideally, in the case of texts, relatedto aspects of the manuscripts in which we find them.

The starting point must be that the production of a manuscript eitherto create a text or texts for the first time or to copy an existing exemplar hadsome perceived value in the Byzantine world. Nigel Wilson has shown that, inthe middle Byzantine period, the cost of a manuscript of some 400 folios wasthe equivalent of several months salary for a low-ranking civil servant. Thatcost included the production of the writing materials as well as the copyistsskill and time.5 We need not worry here about the exact period or the exactsalary. The point is the order of magnitude. In simple terms of price, themodern equivalent to producing or commissioning a manuscript was, shallwe say, buying a small car. It was not the equivalent of buying a modernhardback volume. The best evidence of the preciousness of parchment orvellum is its re-use the palimpsest. Witness, most strikingly for us today, thecodex containing three new texts of Archimedes.6 Thus, a medical manualsuch as that of John the Physician, 90 folios including pinax in one quartomanuscript, might have cost our civil servant one months salary.7 Even such aiatrosophion, when copied on vellum, required a number of hides from sheep orgoats (hardly more than four folia per animal)8 and would have taken severalmonths to write out. And when various types of paper became generallyavailable as a substitute writing material from the eleventh to twelfth centuryonwards, it was not, at least to begin with, very much cheaper in the Byzantineempire.9 So it can be taken as axiomatic in this context that no text was

suggests that we substitute was it successful? (in meeting patients expectations)for did it work? (in relieving symptoms or pain) as our main question.

5 N. Wilson, Books and Readers in Byzantium, in Byzantine Books and Book-men, Washington DC 1975, 3f., with C. Mango, The Availability of Books in theByzantine Empire, A.D. 750-850, ibid. 38f.

6 The Archimedes Palimpsest, ed. R. Netz et al., I-II, Cambridge 2011.7 B. Zipser, John the Physicians Therapeutics. A medical Handbook in ver-

nacular Greek, Leiden-Boston 2009, 18. This estimate is based on manuscript M, theonly complete witness of the text.

8 Wilson, Books and Readers cit. 2.9 R.S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Eg