Treating with minerals in the Middle Ages: the rare substance mūmiyāʾ (pitch-asphalt) and its medicinal uses in Byzantium

IF 0.9 2区 哲学 Q4 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES
Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Fabian Käs
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Premodern medicine used a variety of mineral substances for therapeutic purposes. The present article deals with pitch-asphalt, and, in particular, a precious kind of it called mūmiyāʾ originating in Persia. It was first described in detail in the Arabic pharmacological tradition, and its fame spread throughout the medieval Mediterranean, including Byzantium. By editing and examining for the first time a previously unexplored medieval Greek text on mūmiyāʾ, this study offers new insights into the medicinal uses of this substance. It also significantly increases our understanding of the intense cross-cultural transfer of medical knowledge from the Islamicate world to Byzantium by showing that this was not merely based on the translation of a few Arabic medical works into Greek, but was a multifaceted phenomenon involving a complex nexus of sources that require further investigation.

中世纪的矿物疗法:拜占庭的稀有物质 mūmiyāʾ(沥青)及其药用价值
前现代医学将各种矿物质用于治疗目的。本文论述的是沥青,尤其是源自波斯的一种名为 mūmiyāʾ 的珍贵矿物质。阿拉伯药学传统中首次对其进行了详细描述,其名声传遍了整个中世纪地中海地区,包括拜占庭。本研究首次编辑和研究了以前未曾研究过的关于 mūmiyāʾ 的中世纪希腊文文本,为我们了解这种物质的药用价值提供了新的视角。它还大大加深了我们对医学知识从伊斯兰世界向拜占庭的密集跨文化传播的理解,表明这不仅仅是基于将几部阿拉伯医学著作翻译成希腊文,而是一种涉及复杂来源的多层面现象,需要进一步研究。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Medical History
Medical History 医学-科学史与科学哲学
CiteScore
1.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
25
审稿时长
>12 weeks
期刊介绍: Medical History is a refereed journal devoted to all aspects of the history of medicine and health, with the goal of broadening and deepening the understanding of the field, in the widest sense, by historical studies of the highest quality. It is also the journal of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. The membership of the Editorial Board, which includes senior members of the EAHMH, reflects the commitment to the finest international standards in refereeing of submitted papers and the reviewing of books. The journal publishes in English, but welcomes submissions from scholars for whom English is not a first language; language and copy-editing assistance will be provided wherever possible.
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