Main description:

Medicine and Healing in the Pre-Modern West traces the history of medicine and medical practice from Ancient Egypt through to the end of the Middle Ages. Featuring nearly one hundred primary documents and images, this book introduces students and scholars to the words and ideas of prominent physicians and humble healers, men and women, from across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. Each of the ten chronological and thematic chapters is given a significant historical introduction, in which each primary source is described in its original context. Many of the included source texts are newly translated by the editor, some of them appearing in English for the first time.

Key Features

The first history of medicine reader to cover both Antiquity and the Middle Ages in a single volume.
Nearly one hundred primary sources, including several images.
Each topic and reading is accompanied by an introduction from the editor, and explanatory annotations are included throughout to clarify unfamiliar concepts.
Significant coverage of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures in the Middle Ages.
Many of the primary sources are newly translated, some of them available in English for the first time.

Contents:

Introduction
Chronology
Questions to Consider
Documents
1. The Earliest Medical Writings of the Near East and Mediterranean (ca.2000-700 BCE)
1. The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus
2. Diagnosis in Ancient Egypt: The Ebers Papyrus
3. A Babylonian Spell against Fever
4. Plague as Divine Punishment in Homer's Iliad
5. Gods as the Source of Disease: Hesiod, Works and Days
6. Violence and Healing in Homeric Greece
2. Medicine and Healing among the Ancient Greeks (ca.500 BCE - 200 CE)
Rational Medicine in the Age of Hippocrates
7. Hippocratic Corpus, Nature of Man
8. Plato on the Nature of Disease: Timaeus
9. Thucydides and the Plague of Athens, 430 BCE
10. Hippocratic Corpus, Aphorisms
11. Hippocratic Corpus, Airs, Waters, and Places
12. Case Histories the Hippocratic Epidemics
Asclepius, the God of Physicians
13. The Hippocratic Oath
14. Pindar: Apollo leaves Asclepius with Chiron the Centaur
15. Celsus celebrates Asclepius as a Man
16. A Greek anatomical votive plaque
17. Aelius Aristides dreams of Asclepius
18. An Egyptian God in Greek Dress in a Hellenistic Papyrus
3. Professional Medicine in the Roman Mediterranean (ca.1-300 CE)
19. Galen, On the Medical Sects
20. Aretaeus the Cappadocian on the Difficult Case of Tetanus
21. Rufus of Ephesus, Medical Questions: Interrogation of the Patient
22. Celsus: A Healthy Regimen without Doctors
23. Dioscorides and the Science of Pharmacology
24. Galen, the Boastful Practitioner: On the Affected Places
25. Galen, On Black Bile: Praising and Rewriting Hippocrates
26. Herodian on a plague in the Roman Empire
4. Practical Medicine for the Roman Family and Home (ca.100-500 CE)
27. Varro, De re rustica: An early germ theory?
28. Vegetius, De re militari: Preserving the Health of Imperial Troops
29. The Legend of Agnodike, a Greek midwife and physician
30. Soranus of Ephesus: Instructions for Midwives
31. Cato the Elder's Roman remedies: Cabbage, Wine, and Magic
32. Pliny the Elder's homespun medicine: Remedies derived from Wool
33. Popular medicine in verse: Liber medicinalis
5. Distilling Classical Medicine in Late Antiquity (ca.300-700 CE)
34. Oribasius: A Galenic Diet in the Later Roman Empire
35. Anthimus to King Theoderic, On the Observance of Diet
36. A Medieval Primer in Ancient Medicine by St. Isidore of Seville
37. Medicine of Pliny for the Informed Traveler
38. The Herbarius of Apuleius Platonicus
39. Marcellus and His Empirical Handbook of Medicines
40. The Drug Theory of Paul of Aegina
6. Medical Diversity in the Early Middle Ages (ca.600-1000 CE)
Monotheism and Medicine
41. The Oath of Asaph, a Jewish Physician's Oath
42. A Christianized Hippocratic Oath
43. Medicine and Diet in the Rule of St. Benedict
44. Roman Doctors as Christian Saints: Cosmas and Damian
45. Islamic Medicine of the Prophet: Sunan Abu Duwud
Early Medieval Responses to Plague and Pestilence
46. Evagrius Scholasticus on the Plague of Justinian
47. Gregory of Tours on Epidemic Disease and the Sickness of Kings
48. A Votive Mass against Pestilence
Old English Medicine: Superstition or Empiricism?
49. The Nine Herbs Charm, from the Old English Lacnunga
50. Bald's Leechbook: Herbal remedies for eye problems
51. Medical Prognostics in Anglo-Saxon England
7. The Arabic Tradition of Learned Medicine (ca.900-1400 CE)
52. An Introduction to Rational Medicine: Hunayn ibn Ishaq's Isagoge
53. Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine
54. Avicenna on Prognosis through Urine
55. Maimonides and Galen on the Meaning of the Pulse
56. Al-Razi, Case Studies in the Spirit of Hippocrates
57. Usamah ibn Munqidh: A Muslim view of Frankish Medicine
58. Al-Razi on Diagnosis and Treatment for Smallpox and Measles
59. Pilgrim Medicine: Qust? ibn L?q? on "The Little Dragon of Medina"
60. Ancient Greeks in Later Medieval Prophetic Medicine: al-Tibb al-nabawi
8. Learned Medicine in High Medieval Europe (ca.1000-1400 CE)
Humours, Complexion, and Uroscopy
61. A Clever Duke and a Cleverer Physician in the Tenth Century
62. Constantine the African, Pantegni: Understanding Complexion
63. Humoural Medicine in Verse: The Salernitan Regimen of Health
64. A Medieval Urine Wheel
65. Constantine the African with a Urine Glass
Explaining Diseases
66. Diagnosing Lovesickness: Constantine the African's Medicalized Emotions
67. Platearius on Leprosy in Theory and Practice
68. Guy de Chauliac's personal experience with the Black Death
Observation and Authority
69. Trota of Salerno as a Medical Master
70. Medical Education in High Medieval Europe (Three Accounts)
71. Licenses for Male and Female Surgeons in Medieval Naples
72. A Woman Physician on Trial in Medieval Paris, 1322
9. Medical Practice in the High Middle Ages (ca.1000-1400 CE)
Herbalism and Pharmacology
73. Macer Floridus, On the Virtues of Herbs
74. Henry of Huntingdon, Herbalism in The English Garden
75. Matthaeus Platearius: Rationalizing Simple and Compound Medicines
Arabic and Latin Surgery
76. Learned Surgery: Albucasis on the Treatment of Cataracts
77. Applying Medical Theory to Wound Treatment: Guy de Chauliac
78. Training and Decorum for the Learned Surgeon
Medieval Obstetrics and Gynecology
79. Copho: Anatomy of the uterus, learned from a pig
80. A Brief Guide to Uroscopy of Women
81. Contraceptives in the Canon of Avicenna
82. St. Hildegard of Bingen: A Moralized Explanation of Menstruation
83. Trotula: Treating Retention of the Period in Medieval Italy
84. A Medieval Hebrew Treatise on Difficult Births
10. Medicine and the Supernatural: Competitors or Partners? (ca.1000-1400 CE)
85. A Doctor and a Saint in Early Salerno
86. The Life of Saint Milburga: Physicians and Saints, Healing Together?
87. Doctors and Miracles in the Canonization of Lady Delphine
88. Medieval Jewish Magical Medicine
89. Medieval Christian Healing Charms
90. John Arderne, Astrological Instructions for the Surgeon
91. Image: Astrological Bloodletting Man