This book presents a new edition, with translation, introduction and commentary, of two short medical texts, both transmitted in the Hippocratic Corpus but surely neither by the historical Hippocrates. The two works differ considerably in nature and origins: On Sight (Part 1) is a sketchy surgical manual on eye afflictions, perhaps originating in the African continent, and On Anatomy (Part 2) is an allusive account of basic human anatomy, perhaps originating in north Greece. Each text is interpreted in its own right and in the wider context of Hippocratic and other medical...

Hippocratic Recipes is the first extended study of the pharmacological recipes included in the Hippocratic Corpus. The recipes, found mostly in the gynaecological and nosological treatises, are here examined both from a philological and a sociocultural point of view. Drawing on studies in the fields of classics, social history of medicine, and anthropology, this book offers new insights into the production and use of pharmacological knowledge in the classical world. In particular, it assesses the deep interactions between oral and written traditions in the transmission of this...

This is a new edition, with translation, introduction and commentary, of the Hippocratic treatise "On Glands." Through a close analysis of both content and expression, the text is interpreted and situated in the wider context of ancient medical writing.

The Therapeutics of John the Physician is a medical handbook from the thirteenth century, holding important new evidence on medicine as craft. Of particular interest is a vernacular version of the text, which also contains a commentary. Here, an unknown reviser vividly describes cases and medical procedures, a type of knowledge rarely encountered in scholarly texts. In the present volume, the Therapeutics is published for the first time, along with a translation and an introduction to the topic. Apart from insights into medical history, the text also yields a large quantity of...

The collection of writings known as the Corpus Hippocraticum played a decisive role in medical education for more than twenty-four centuries. This is the first full-length volume on medical education in Graeco-Roman antiquity since Kudlien's seminal article of 1970. Most of the articles in this volume were originally presented as papers at the XIIth International Colloquium Hippocraticum in Leiden in 2005.

On the art of medicine, or de Arte, embodies as perhaps no other ancient text the full flower of the sophistic movement of the fifth century BCE. It is a rhetorical epideixis in which forensic oratory, philosophy, and medicine are woven into an ambitious display of sophistic polymathy. Unlike much previous scholarship, however, this book does not dismiss de Arte as "merely" rhetorical. Its analysis of the author's philosophical and medical views reveals that he strove to promote a consistent and rationally grounded system capable of responding to theoretical and practical...

This volume makes available for the first time in English translation a selection of Jacques Jouanna's papers on medicine in the Graeco-Roman world. The papers cover more than thirty years of Jouanna's scholarship and range from the early beginnings of Greek medicine to late antiquity. Part One studies the ways in which Greek medicine is related to its historical and cultural background (politics, rhetoric, drama, religion). Part Two studies a number of salient features of Hippocratic medicine, such as dietetics, theories of health and disease and concepts of psychosomatic interaction, in...

Current questions on whether Hellenistic Egypt should be understood in terms of colonialism and imperialism, multicultural separatism, or integration and syncretism have never been closely studied in the context of healing. Yet illness affects and is affected by nutrition, disease and reproduction within larger questions of demography, agriculture and environment. It is crucial to every socio-economic group, all ages, and both sexes; perceptions and responses to illness are ubiquitous in all kinds of evidence, both Greek and Egyptian and from archaeology to literature. Examing all forms of...

Latin medical texts transmit medical theories and practices that originated mainly in Greece. This interaction took place through juxtaposition, assimilation and transformation of ideas. 'Greek' and 'Roman' in Latin Medical Texts studies the ways in which this cultural interaction influenced the development of the medical profession and the growth of knowledge of human and animal bodies, and especially how it provided the foundations for innovations in the areas of anatomy, pathology and pharmacology, from the earliest Latin medical texts until well into the medieval world.

With The Tools of Asclepius Lawrence Bliquez offers the first comprehensive treatment in English of the instruments and paraphernalia employed by Greco-Roman surgeons since John St. Milne's Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times (1907). Introductory sections cover topics ranging from literary and archaeological sources to the design, materials and production of instruments and the training and practice of the doctors-surgeons who used them. Summaries of Hippocratic and Hellenistic surgery lead to the meat of the book: tools used during the Roman Empire. These are...