Petros Bouras-Vallianatos

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.

Exploring Greek Manuscripts in the Library at Wellcome Collection in London

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 significant degree of originality, in particular, in the fields of uroscopy and human physiology. The analysis of John's edited (On Urines and On Psychic Pneuma) and unedited (Medical Epitome) treatises is supported for the first time by the consultation of a large number of manuscripts, and is also informed by evidence from a wide range of medical sources, including those previously unpublished, and texts from other genres, such as epistolography and merchants' accounts. The contextualization of John's corpus sheds new light on the development of Byzantine medical thought and practice, and enhances our understanding of the Late Byzantine social and intellectual landscape. Through examination of his medical observations in the light of examples from the medieval Latin and Islamic worlds, his theories are also placed within the wider Mediterranean milieu, highlighting the cultural exchange between Byzantium and its neighbours.

The Writings of John Zacharias Aktouarios (C. 1275-C. 1330)

Innovation in Byzantine Medicine

Sophia Xenophontos

This volume focuses on the relationship between Greek medical texts and their audience(s), offering insights into how not only the backgrounds and skills of medical authors but also the contemporary environment affected issues of readership, methodology and mode of exposition. One of the volume’s overarching aims is to add to our understanding of the role of the reader in the contextualisation of Greek medical literature in the light of interesting case-studies from various – often radically different – periods and cultures, including the Classical (such as the Hippocratic corpus) and Roman Imperial period (for instance Galen), and the Islamic and Byzantine world. Promoting, as it does, more in-depth research into the intricacies of Greek medical writings and their diverse revival and transformation from the fifth century BC down to the fourteenth century AD, this volume will be of interest to classicists, medical historians and anyone concerned with the reception of the Greek medical tradition.

Petros Bouras-Vallianatos

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