Herbal remedies II - Hippocrates and Galen

Here it is the full book about the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, translated by John Redman Coxe in 1846. If you are a fan of the past, or if you want to have a peek at what the ones of the Old where thinking, and how did they used the herbs and not only, this is the book.

Short introduction:

Galen (c. 129 - c. 216/17 CE)
Galen was born in Greece, studied medicine in Egypt and became the most celebrated physician in the Roman Empire. His theories were to dominate Western medical thinking for centuries after his death. A radical and innovative experimenter, he considered dissection a key tool in understanding the human body. Although he was restricted by law to dissecting animals, the three years he spent from 158 CE as physician to the gladiators of his home city of Pergamon were a formative period in his life in medicine. The traumatic injuries he regularly encountered gave Galen the perfect opportunity to extend his practical medical knowledge of the human body. Galen was greatly influenced by the working methods of Hippocrates and other earlier Greek doctors. He similarly advocated the humoral theory of the body and like Hippocrates he also placed great importance on clinical observation through careful examination of patients and the recording of their symptoms. Galen paid particular attention to an individual’s pulse, monitoring it for abnormalities and using it as a tool to diagnose disease and suggest possible treatments. Feeling a patient’s pulse remains a standard diagnostic procedure to this day. Galen was a prolific writer. He was widely known in his lifetime, but his prolonged influence owed much to the Islamic scholars who absorbed, reproduced and added to his body of work in the early medieval period. Subsequently these works were re-translated in the West, where they effectively remained beyond criticism until the Renaissance. In that new age of experimentation and investigation the fault lines in much of his work began to be revealed and many of his theories and techniques were gradually replaced or amended by the likes of Vesalius and William Harvey. Despite this, Galen remains a towering figure in the history of medicine.

Hyppocrates (c. 460 - c. 370 BCE)
Hippocrates was a Greek philosopher and physician who has been called ‘the father of medicine’. He and his followers dismissed the idea that illness was simply caused or cured by superstitions, spirits or gods. Instead, he argued for a rational approach to medical treatment based on close observation of the individual patient. However, so little is known about the man himself that some scholars have questioned whether he was a real person at all. In Hippocratic medicine, effective treatment relied on considering the patient as a whole. Diet, sleep, work and exercise were all seen as important factors that could play a role in producing - and reversing - the imbalance in humours that was believed to result in illness. Diseases were allowed to run their natural course with treatment restricted mainly to the careful use of specific herbal medicines. Surgery was very much seen as a last resort. Hippocrates is believed to have founded a medical school on Kos - the island of his birth - where his students helped to spread his ideas. A collection of ancient written works associated with Hippocrates and his teachings, known as ‘The Hippocratic Corpus’, was a huge influence on the development of medicine in the centuries that followed. The Hippocratic oath was most probably compiled by a number of authors, but echoes elements of his philosophy and has an enduring legacy as the ethical framework for the medical profession.

Herbal remedies I (Mini-Review - De Materia Medica, by Pedanius Dioscorides)

   Ancient herbal traditions said that plants were flesh of the Gods. Oldest fragmentary herbal records are Pen Tsao Ching of Emperor Shen Nung in China about 2700 BC, Ebers Papyrus in Egypt about 1550 BC, 5000 year old Sumerian tablet with medical subscriptions, containing material gathered 5 to 20 centuries before. The earliest herbal writers we can name are Greek, Theophrastus (Enquiry into plants - 350 BC), Hippocrates, Diokles of Carystus, Krateuas and his contemporary, the Roman Sextius Niger (100 BC), Nicander of Colophon and Nicolaus of Damascus (De Plantis - 30 BC). Krateuas is the first autor and illustrator known to us.
   The earliest surviving records of illustrated Greek Herbals indicate De Materia Medica was widely read and reproduced during Middle ages in Latin, Arabic and Greek. For 1500 years was the standard authority both in botany and materia medica, assuming considerable significance in the development of both Western and Islamic cultures.
   De Materia Medica now is partially based on the lost work of Diokles, also called Hippocrates II, which dealt with hygiene and prophylaxis, and gave detailed instructions for a healthy living. The earliest copies of Dioscorides Manuscript were not illustrated. The oldest fragment survived is the Michigan Papyrus. The finest surviving comprehensive manuscript copy, magnificently illustrated, was made in the sixth century in Constantinople - Codex Vindobonensis. The manuscript is on vellum, written in Greek uncials in the tradition of early 6th century calligraphy. Alternate plant names in many languages were probably added by the Alexandrian lexicographer Pamphilos in 1st century AC, and they are provided in African, Andreae medici, Armenian, Egyptian, Bessicum, Boeotian, Cappadocian, Dacian, Dardana, Democriti, Ethiopian, Gaulish, Spanish, Istrici, Lucanica, Marsum, Osthanis, Prophetae, Pythagorean, Roman, Tuscan and Zoroastrian. The coloured paintings of plants date from the second century, they are splendid and reveal a naturalism alien to Byzantine art of the time. Eleven items are clearly derived from the writings and paintings of Krateuas (Cratevas), physician to Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus (120-60 BC). Codex Vindobonensis is a large book, roughly 30 centimeters square, of 491 parchment sheets, with nearly 400 full page paintings of plants and some smaller ones of birds. Many of them are indigenous to Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean area, or cultivated as edible crops. The first pages of Codex Vindobonensis have smaller paintings, including one showing Dioscorides at work while Intelligence hold a mandrake fro Krateuas to draw.

   Some paintings are quite skillful, handling awkward details like the leaf-bases clasp the stem, fine leaved plants like fennel are well drawn, other beautiful illustration include cyclamen, wormwood, delphinium, scarlet pimpernel and asphodel. In this codex an alphabetic extract of the original text is given.

   Nearly nine centuries pass before we hear next of the manuscript. It was rebound in 1406 by John Chirtasmenos for Natanael, a monk and physician in Podromos Monastery in Constantinople. After the Muslim conquest in 1453 the manuscript fell to Turks. A century later a Jew called Hamon, body physician to Suleiman the Magnificent, owned it. After few years the manuscript found its way to Maximillian II, into the Imperial Library in Vienna (now the Bibliothek Nationale). Some copies are found in Bibliotheca Nationale in Naples (Codex Neapolitanus), Cambridge, Paris, Florence and the Vatican.  A rich illustrated Arabic Manuscript from 1224 is found in Top Kapu Saray Museum, some copies are also founded in Middle East museums.

Book one - Plants described: aromatics, 188 plants -  

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Book two - Discussion both of living creatures and of honey and of milk and of animal fat and of those things which they call frumentacea [cereals], as well as pot herbs [vegetables], annexing for those such herbs as are endowed with a sharp quality because such are near of kin, as are garlic and onions and mustard seed that the qualities of those things so similar in nature should not be separated.

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Book three - An account of roots, juices, herbs, and seeds -- suitable both for common use and for medications.

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Book four - About herbs and roots not previously mentioned.

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Book five - About wines and metallic things, beginning with the tract concerning the vine.

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