Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah


Book Description

The authors provide a new insight to the practice of medical care in the medieval world. They examine the medicinal prescriptions and references to materia medica of the Cairo Genizah by combining the approaches of ethnobotany and history of medicine.




Drugs in the Medieval Mediterranean


Book Description

Adopts a pan-Mediterranean approach to the study of medieval medicine and pharmacology, which permits a deeper understanding of broader phenomena such as the transfer of scientific knowledge and cultural exchange. Of great importance to medical historians, medieval historians and scholars of Byzantine, Islamicate, Jewish, and Latin traditions.




A Literary History of Medicine


Book Description

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill. A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing.




King Solomon's Table


Book Description

From the James Beard Award-winning, much-loved cookbook author and authority: a definitive compendium of Jewish recipes from around the globe and across the ages. Driven by a passion for discovery, the biblical King Solomon is said to have sent emissaries on land and sea to all corners of the ancient world, initiating a mass cross-pollination of culinary cultures that continues to bear fruit today. With Solomon’s appetites and explorations in mind, in these pages Joan Nathan—“the queen of American Jewish cooking” (Houston Chronicle)—gathers together more than 170 recipes, from Israel to Italy to India and beyond. Here are classics like Yemenite Chicken Soup with Dill, Cilantro, and Parsley; Slow-Cooked Brisket with Red Wine, Vinegar, and Mustard; and Apple Kuchen as well as contemporary riffs on traditional dishes such as Smoky Shakshuka with Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant; Double-Lemon Roast Chicken; and Roman Ricotta Cheese Crostata. Here, too, are an array of dishes from the world over, from Socca (Chickpea Pancakes with Fennel, Onion, and Rosemary) and Sri Lankan Breakfast Buns with Onion Confit to Spanakit (Georgian Spinach Salad with Walnuts and Cilantro) and Keftes Garaz (Syrian Meatballs with Cherries and Tamarind). Gorgeously illustrated and filled with fascinating historical details, personal histories, and delectable recipes, King Solomon’s Table showcases the dazzling diversity of a culinary tradition more than three thousand years old.




Mechanisms of Exchange


Book Description

Featuring eight innovative studies by prominent scholars of medieval art and architecture, this special issue of Medieval Encounters examines the specific means by which art and architectural forms, techniques, and ideas were transmitted throughout the medieval world (ca. 1000-1500). While focusing on the Mediterranean region, the collection also includes essays that expand this geographic zone into a cultural and artistic one by demonstrating contact with near and distant neighbors, thereby allowing an expanded understanding of the interconnectedness of the medieval world. The studies are united by a focus on the specific mechanisms that enabled artistic and architectural interaction, as well as the individuals who facilitated these transmissions. Authors also consider the effects and collaboration of portable and monumental arts in the creation of intercultural artistic traditions. Contributors are: Justine Andrews, Maria Georgopoulou, Ludovico Geymonat, Heather E. Grossman, Eva Hoffman, Melanie Michailidis, Renata Holod, Scott Redford and Alicia Walker.




Compound Remedies


Book Description

Compound Remedies examines the equipment, books, and remedies of colonial Mexico City’s Herrera pharmacy—natural substances with known healing powers that formed part of the basis for modern-day healing traditions and home remedies in Mexico. Paula S. De Vos traces the evolution of the Galenic pharmaceutical tradition from its foundations in ancient Greece to the physician-philosophers of medieval Islamic empires and the Latin West and eventually through the Spanish Empire to Mexico, offering a global history of the transmission of these materials, knowledges, and techniques. Her detailed inventory of the Herrera pharmacy reveals the many layers of this tradition and how it developed over centuries, providing new perspectives and insight into the development of Western science and medicine: its varied origins, its engagement with and inclusion of multiple knowledge traditions, the ways in which these traditions moved and circulated in relation to imperialism, and its long-term continuities and dramatic transformations. De Vos ultimately reveals the great significance of pharmacy, and of artisanal pursuits more generally, as a cornerstone of ancient, medieval, and early modern epistemologies and philosophies of nature.




Traditional Medicines Around the World


Book Description

Our health is our most important asset. Health and the provision of healthcare is fundamental to the welfare of any nation. The desire to have and sustain good health cuts across national, cultural, geographic, and political boundaries. Every region of the world has had one form of traditional medicine at some stage in its history. Traditional medicines have been a part of human history all over the world, with knowledge being transferred from generation to generation. It refers to diverse health practices, knowledge, and skills based on ancient indigenous experience that are used to maintain health as well as to cure, diagnose, or prevent illness. This book focuses on ten most popular traditional medicines around the world. It is a valuable source of guidance and direction for organizations and individuals interested in traditional medicine. It provides an introduction to traditional medicine so that beginners can understand it, its increasing importance, and its developments in contemporary time. It is a must-read book for anyone who cares about traditional.




Collecting Recipes


Book Description

With a clear comparative approach, this volume brings together for the first time contributions that cover different periods of the history of ancient pharmacology, from Greek, Byzantine, and Syriac medicine to the Rabbinic-Talmudic medical discourses. This collection opens up new synchronic and diachronic perspectives in the study of the ancient traditions of recipe-books and medical collections. Besides the highly influential Galenic tradition, the contributions will focus on less studied Byzantine and Syriac sources as well as on the Talmudic tradition, which has never been systematically investigated in relation to medicine. This inquiry will highlight the overwhelming mass of information about drugs and remedies, which accumulated over the centuries and was disseminated in a variety of texts belonging to distinct cultural milieus. Through a close analysis of some relevant case studies, this volume will trace some paths of this transmission and transformation of pharmacological knowledge across cultural and linguistic boundaries, by pointing to the variety of disciplines and areas of expertise involved in the process.




Dynasties Intertwined


Book Description

Dynasties Intertwined traces the turbulent relationship between the Zirids of Ifriqiya and the Normans of Sicily during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In doing so, it reveals the complex web of economic, political, cultural, and military connections that linked the two dynasties to each other and to other polities across the medieval Mediterranean. Furthermore, despite the contemporary interfaith holy wars happening around the Zirids and Normans, their relationship was never governed by an overarching ideology like jihad or crusade. Instead, both dynasties pursued policies that they thought would expand their power and wealth, either through collaboration or conflict. The relationship between the Zirids and Normans ultimately came to a violent end in the 1140s, when a devastating drought crippled Ifriqiya. The Normans seized this opportunity to conquer lands across the Ifriqiyan coast, bringing an end to the Zirid dynasty and forming the Norman kingdom of Africa, which persisted until the Almohad conquest of Mahdia in 1160. Previous scholarship on medieval North Africa during the reign of the Zirids has depicted the region as one of instability and political anarchy that rendered local lords powerless in the face of foreign conquest. Matt King shows that, to the contrary, the Zirids and other local lords in Ifriqiya were integral parts of the far-reaching political and economic networks across the Mediterranean. Despite the eventual collapse of the Zirid dynasty at the hands of the Normans, Dynasties Intertwined makes clear that its emirs were active and consequential Mediterranean players for much of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with political agency independent of their Christian neighbors across the Strait of Sicily.




Medieval Welsh Medical Texts


Book Description

OPEN ACCESS To view Medieval Welsh Medical Texts for free click on the following links: https://www.uwp.co.uk/app/uploads/MWMT_final_low-res-1.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK558253/ This volume presents the first critical edition and translation of the corpus of medieval Welsh medical recipes traditionally ascribed to the Physicians of Myddfai. These offer practical treatments for a variety of everyday conditions such as toothache, constipation and gout. The recipes have been edited from the four earliest collections of Welsh medical texts in manuscript, which date from the late fourteenth century. A series of notes provides sources and analogues for the recipes, demonstrating their relationship with the European medical tradition. The identification of herbal ingredients in the recipes is based on pre-modern plant-name glossaries rather than modern dictionaries, and has led to new interpretations of many of the recipes. Comprehensive glossaries allow the reader to find any recipe based on the ingredients and equipment used in it or the condition treated. This new interpretation of these texts clearly shows that they are not unique, but rather form part of the medical tradition that was common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages.