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Editor / Translator:
ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban aṭ-Ṭabarī's Indian Books, completed in the year 850 CE as an appendix to his medico-philosophical chef-d'œuvre "Paradise of Wisdom", belong to the most remarkable texts in Arabic scientific literature. The Indian Books offer a unique, interpretative summary of the main tenets of Ayurvedic medicine, as understood by Arabic-speaking scholars on the basis of now lost translations from Sanskrit. The present book centres around a critical edition and annotated translation of this crucial text, framed by a detailed introduction and extensive glossaries of terms. Ṭabarī's learned exposé of Ayurveda also throws a more nuanced light on the allegedly uncontested supremacy of Greek humoralism in 9th-century Arabic medicine.
The medical compendium entitled Zād al-musāfir wa-qūt al-ḥāḍir (Provisions for the Traveller and Nourishment for the Sedentary) and compiled by Ibn al-Jazzār from Qayrawān in the tenth century is one of the most influential handbooks in the history of western medicine. In the eleventh century, Constantine the African translated it into Latin; this translation was the basis for several commentaries compiled from the twelfth century on. The text was also translated into Byzantine Greek and three times into medieval Hebrew. The present volume includes a new critical edition of the Arabic text of books I and II, along with an annotated English translation, as well as critical editions of Constantine’s Viaticum and the Hebrew versions by Ibn Tibbon, Abraham ben Isaac, and Do’eg ha-Edomi.
Latin-German Pharmaceutical Glossaries in Hebrew Characters extant in Ms Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek, Cod. Or. 4732/1 (SCAL 15), fols. 1a–17b
With A Glimpse into Medical Practice among Jews around 1500: Latin-German Pharmaceutical Glossaries in Hebrew Characters extant in Ms Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Cod. Or. 4732/1 (SCAL 15), fols. 1a–17b, Gerrit Bos and Klaus-Dietrich Fischer present an edition of two unique medieval lists of medico-botanical terms in Latin and German, written in Hebrew characters. Jewish physicians probably used these kinds of lists for the acquisition of pharmaceuticals they needed for the preparation of medicines. The edition with a total of 568 entries features transcriptions from the Hebrew, tables and indexes of the analysed terms in a regularized form, and a facsimile of the Leiden manuscript.

Many of the German plant names featuing in the edition are not listed in the otherwise monumental reference work Wörterbuch der deutschen Pflanzennamen (Dictionary of German Plant Names) by the German botanist Heinrich Marzell. This testifies to the value of these glossaries for further research. It is also useful to see which Latin forms were in current use at the time of creation of the edition.
Editor / Translator:
The Arabic treatise edited and translated here was written in the middle of the 9th century CE by ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban aṭ-Ṭabarī, a Christian convert to Islam and one of the most remarkable thinkers of his time. The text can be described as a manual towards the preservation of health, addressed directly to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil and his household. It represents not only the oldest extant specimen of its kind, but is also distinguished by its largely non-technical language, as well as by a narrative style that creates an unusual interface with classical Arabic prose literature. The Greek and Indian sources upon which aṭ-Ṭabarī relied testify to the synthetic and inclusive character of early Islamic medicine.
In Crocologia – A Detailed Study of Saffron, the King of Plants, Sally Francis and Maria Teresa Ramandi present the first translation into English of Johann Ferdinand Hertodt’s seminal 1671 work Crocologia, a book uniquely devoted to the medical uses of saffron. Hertodt discusses saffron’s origin, related species, cultivation, selection, properties and lists all its pharmaceutical preparations. Hertodt then journeys through diseases of the human body, presenting saffron-containing formulae for their treatment.

The two authors complement the translation with a biography of Hertodt, and detail saffron’s botany, current production, uses, its changing reputation as a drug, and review findings from new medical research. There is a full Glossary, and translation of a contemporary animadversion of Crocologia by Hertodt’s rival, Wenzel Maximilian Ardensbach.
Volume I: Essays / Volume 2-1: Arabic Edition / Volume 2-2: Arabic Edition / Volume 3-1: Annotated English Translation / Volume 3-2: Annotated English Translation, Appendices and Indices
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.
The Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ, Arabic Edition and English Translation with a Hebrew Supplement by Gerrit Bos
Authors: and
The Kitāb Taḥrīm dafn al-aḥyāʾ, the Book on the Prohibition to Bury the Living, written by the Nestorian physician ʿUbaidallāh Ibn Buḫtīšūʿ (d. c. 1060 CE), deals with the causes, signs and treatments of apparent death. Based on a short pseudo-Galenic treatise, whose Greek original is lost, ʿUbaidallāh’s Arabic commentary is a comprehensive and in many ways unique piece of scientific writing that moreover promotes a psychological understanding of physical illness. Oliver Kahl’s present book offers a critical Arabic edition with annotated English translation of ʿUbaidallāh’s work on apparent death, framed by a detailed introductory study and extensive glossaries covering all relevant terms; for comparative purposes, the Arabic and Hebrew recensions of the lost Greek prototype are presented in an appendix.
Editor / Translator:
In The Indian System of Human Marks, Zysk offers a literary history of the Indian system of knowledge, which details divination by means of the marks on the bodies of both men and women. In addition to a historical analysis, the work includes texts and translations of the earliest treatises in Sanskrit. This is followed by a detailed philological analysis of the texts and annotations to the translations.
The history follows the Indian system’s evolution from its roots in ancient Mesopotamian collections of omen on the human body to modern-day practice in Rajasthan in the north and Tamilnadu in the south. A special feature of the book is Zysk’s edition and translation of the earliest textual collection of the system in the Gargīyajyotiṣa from the 1st century CE. The system of human marks is one of the few Indian textual sources that links ancient India with the antique cultures of Mesopotamia and Greece.
A Critical Edition of a Seventeenth-Century Chagatay Work by Subḥān Qulï Khan
Author:
This is the first serious study on seventeenth-century Central Asian medicine that provides a major resource for the linguistic and cultural history of Central Asia. The richly annotated English translation makes the edition useful for readers without special knowledge on medical history and Turkic studies.
The author offers a critical edition of a seventeenth-century Central Asian medical treatise written by Sayyid Subḥān Qulï Muḥammad Bahādur khan in the Chagatay language.The edition includes a detailed introduction, a transcription of the original text for philological purposes, an annotated English translation, complete lexica of vocabulary, herbs and plants, minerals and chemicals, diseases and related terms, measures and units, personal names and Qur’ānic verses, and finally two manuscripts in facsimile.


A Medieval Arabic Study Manual by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Sulamī
This is a translation and edition of the medieval Arabic medical work entitled Imtiḥān al-alibbā' li-kāffat al-aṭibbā' ("The Experts' Examination for All Physicians"). It is a study guide for students of medicine prepared by Abd al-Azīz al-Sulami who was chief of medicine to the Ayyūbid sultan in Cairo between 596/1200 and 604/1208. It is composed of ten chapters on ten fields of medicine: the pulse, urine, fevers and crises, symptoms, drugs, treatment, ophthalmology, surgery, bonesetting, and fundamentals. Each chapter contains twenty questions on the respective subject with the answer to each question. In addition an authority is cited for each answer. This work sheds light on medical education in the medieval Middle East and is an epitome of the medical knowledge of the time.