MEDICAL TABLETS FROM THE ARCHIVE OF THE EGIBI FAMILY? AN EDITION OF BM 30918 AND BM 31071

Iraq ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Krisztián Simkó ◽  
András Bácskay
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Important Member ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
First Millennium

Building on recent advances in the field of Neo- and Late Babylonian medicine, this paper presents the edition and thorough analysis of two unpublished medical tablets from the collections of the British Museum (BM 30918 and BM 31071). In the first part, the archival and social context of these tablets will be explored, while also reporting on findings about how they might fit into the larger corpus of Late Babylonian medical texts. The two tablets are published in the second part of the paper. The aim of this paper is to illustrate that the discussed tablets contribute a lot to our understanding of how medicine as a scientific field worked in the latter half of the first millennium B.C.E. It advances further and draws up more comprehensively the thesis about the “personalisation” of medical knowledge, put forward only recently in the scholarly literature. In addition, it also collects evidence that ties Itti-Marduk-balāṭu, an important member of the Egibi family, to the craft of incantation priests (āšipūtu); this person has so far been known mostly for his activity as a businessman.

Epidemics and History: Multiple Approaches to the Subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Mikhel
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The problems of epidemics have increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. The history of epidemics has its own historiography, which dates to the physician Hippocrates and the historian Thucydides. Up to the 19th century, historians followed their ideas, but due to the progress in medical knowledge that began at that time, they almost lost interest in the problems of epidemics. In the early 20th century, due to the development of microbiology and epidemiology, a new form of the historiography of epidemics emerged: the natural history of diseases which was developed by microbiologists. At the same time, medical history was reborn, and its representatives saw their task as proving to physicians the usefulness of studying ancient medical texts. Among the representatives of the new generation of medical historians, authors who contributed to the development of the historiography of epidemics eventually emerged. By the end of the 20th century, they included many physician-enthusiasts. Since the 1970s, influenced by many factors, more and more professional historians, for whom the history of epidemics is an integral part of the history of society. The last quarter-century has also seen rapid growth in popular historiography of epidemics, made possible by the activation of various humanities researchers and journalists trying to make the history of epidemics more lively and emotional. A great influence on the spread of new approaches to the study of the history of epidemics is now being exerted by the media, focusing public attention on the new threats to human civilization in the form of modern epidemics.

scholarly journals From the original article to the summary for patients: Reformulation procedures in intralingual translation

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Muñoz-Miquel
Keyword(s):  
Patient Education ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Specialized Knowledge ◽  
Text Genre

The wider access to information and the tendency toward patient education have increased the demand for medical texts aimed at a wide, non-specialized, heterogeneous audience. In this context, it is essential to know what procedures are required to make specialized knowledge accessible to non-experts. This paper presents a corpus-based exploratory study that describes the procedures employed to reformulate, intralingually, medical knowledge from a highly specialized genre, the original article (OA), into a genre derived directly from it but addressed to laymen, namely, the summary for patients (SP). The linguistic and textual changes that take place when translating an OA into an SP are taken as the basis for explaining the reformulation procedures used. The results of the study contribute to the characterization of the SP from a text genre perspective, and provide keys to writing and reformulating for both medical translators and experts in the field, who are often called upon to carry out these intralingual translations.

A Surgeon’s Hand

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-62
Author(s):  
Lisa Allette Brooks
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Technical Skill ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Surgical Practice ◽  
General Physicians ◽  
First Millennium

Abstract The Suśrutasaṃhitā, an early first-millennium Ayurvedic treatise with an emphasis on surgery, recommends a procedure for examining a corpse after first submerging it in a river. Prompted by the sensory insights of a contemporary Ayurvedic physician who simulated “hydro-dissection” on a human hand, I offer a sensory reading of representations of surgeons and surgical tactility in early South Asia. This study demonstrates that surgeons are represented in early first-millennium treatises as possessing specialized medical knowledge, performing dangerous procedures, and having greater sensory and bodily intimacy in their engagement with patients than general physicians. First, I compare passages describing physicians’ sensory engagements in diagnostic examination in the Carakasaṃhitā and Suśrutasaṃhitā. Then I examine representations of surgeons and surgical practice in the Carakasaṃhitā, a general medical compendium. Finally, I demonstrate that surgical tactility is represented in the Suśrutasaṃhitā as an interplay of sensory knowledge, technical skill, experience, and judgment, constituting the surgeon’s hand.

scholarly journals Advances in adrenal tumors 2018

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. R405-R420 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Crona ◽  
F Beuschlein ◽  
K Pacak ◽  
B Skogseid
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Translational Research ◽  
Adrenal Tumor ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Adrenal Tumors ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Tumor Research

This review aims to provide clinicians and researchers with a condensed update on the most important studies in the field during 2017. We present the academic output measured by active clinical trials and peer-reviewed published manuscripts. The most important and contributory manuscripts were summarized for each diagnostic entity, with a particular focus on manuscripts that describe translational research that have the potential to improve clinical care. Finally, we highlight the importance of collaborations in adrenal tumor research, which allowed for these recent advances and provide structures for future success in this scientific field.

AL-MAˇGŪSĪ'S KITĀB AL-MALAKĪ AND ITS LATIN TRANSLATION ASCRIBED TO CONSTANTINE THE AFRICAN: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF PANTEGNI, PRACTICA, LIBER III

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAPHAELA VEIT
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Constantine The African ◽  
Important Position

Constantine the African's significance as the first important translator of medical texts from Arabic into Latin is indisputable due to the fact that his work contributed decisively to the enlargement of medical knowledge in the Latin West. Among his considerable œuvre the translation of al-Maˇgūsī's Kitāb al-Malakī under its Latin title Pantegni, the first real medical compendium in Latin, holds a particularly important position because of its popularity. The Pantegni is divided into the two parts Theory and Practice with ten books each. Yet while the Theorica Pantegni corresponds basically to the Theory in the Kitāb al-Malakī, this is only partly the case for the Practica Pantegni. The content of the differing parts has been put together mainly from other medical texts. The identification of these other medical texts was the aim of some important researches while the last ten years (see especially the articles in Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart [eds.], Constantine the African and ‘Alī ibn ‘Abbās al-Maˇgūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts [Leiden / New York / Cologne, 1994]). The aim of this article is to present the sources of the Pantegni, Practica’s third book and to give some indications on the person who made the compilation who – as it seems – wasn't Constantine the African himself.

scholarly journals PIGS AND PLAQUES: CONSIDERING RM. 714 IN LIGHT OF COMPARATIVE ARTISTIC AND TEXTUAL SOURCES

Iraq ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Gina Konstantopoulos
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Potential Functions ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Cylinder Seals

Rm. 714, a first millenniumb.c.e.tablet in the collections of the British Museum, is remarkable for the fine carving of a striding pig in high relief on its obverse. Purchased by Hormuzd Rassam in Baghdad in 1877, it lacks archaeological context and must be considered in light of other textual and artistic references to pigs, the closest parallel being a sow and her piglets seen in the reliefs of Court VI from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. Unlike depictions of pigs on later cylinder seals, where they are often shown as a dangerous quarry in hunting scenes, Rm. 714's pig appears in a more neutral, non-aggressive posture, similar to the sow in the Assyrian reliefs. Although Rm. 714's highly curved reverse would inhibit its use as a mounted or otherwise easily displayed object, the tablet may still have served as an apotropaic object or sculptor's model, among other potential functions.

Empathy, Patients’ Needs, and Therapeutic Innovation in the Medical Literature of Early Viceregal Mexico

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
Yarí Pérez Marín
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Local Source ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Scientific Debates

Agustín Farfán’s Tractado breve de anothomia y chirvgia (1579) stands out as one of the most widely read medical texts of sixteenth-century colonial Mexico, printed more times than any other local source on health and the body during the period. Despite its popularity then, it has not received as much attention from scholars as projects by other medical authors of the colonial era who either wrote before Farfán did, or were better positioned in European circles, or whose work is seen as having tapped into cutting-edge scientific debates. This chapter proposes a new entry point into the Tractado, highlighting its singular connection with the readers of New Spain, and taking as a point of departure the revisions between the first and second editions: a series of context-driven changes that reveal shifting attitudes toward patients’ needs and indigenous medical knowledge.

Building for the Cremated Dead: Ephemeral and Cumulative Constructions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wessman ◽  
Howard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Inherent Nature ◽  
Early Historic

Given its inherent nature as fiery transformation, the archaeological traces of past cremation practices are always partial and fragmentary. However, recent advances in archaeological excavation and osteological analyses, and novel theoretical investigations of cremation’s variability, character, and context, have enriched and developed the archaeology of cremation in prehistoric and early historic societies (for a review, see Chapter 1, this volume; see also; Williams 2008, 2015b; Wessman 2010; Cerezo-Román and Williams 2014). For the later first millennium AD, archaeologists persist in underestimating the potential for investigating cremation practices, and this is particularly true of the study of mortuary structures and monuments associated with cremation burials (see also Chapter 4, this volume; Chapter 13, this volume; Williams 2013, 2014a). To some extent, the impoverished archaeological investigation of the architectural dimensions of cremation in particular is understandable. Archaeologists are well acquainted with the fact that burial monuments can be multiphased and become subject to uses and reuses over millennia, and indeed, many early medieval cemeteries focus on, reuse, and adapt, far older monuments (Williams 1997;Wessman 2010). There are also examples of large monumental barrows built over cremation burials, as in the late sixth and early seventh centuries at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, showing that cremation ceremonies could be utilized to make enduring, prominent monuments to commemorate the dead and project remembrance down the generations (Carver 2005). However, the more ephemeral mortuary architectures of the late first millennium AD which characterize the majority of cemeteries in most regions—mounds, ring-ditches, stone-settings, post-holes, and the like—are often damaged or destroyed by postdepositional processes. When burial monuments are identified they often appear to have been inherently modest structures that defy familiar explanations as status-markers and landmarks to project the commemoration of the dead across the landscape and through time. It is often all too tempting for archaeologists to dismiss these structures and refer to cemeteries in which cremation burials occur as ‘flat cemeteries’ or else to kaleidoscope these monuments into a single chronological phase and portray them as ‘collective’ structures. Hence, many archaeological accounts, emphasizing the spectacle and fragmentation of open-air cremation in the human past, wrongly imply, or explicitly stipulate, that cremation is counter-architectural.

The Dissemination and Practice of Primary Care Medicine by the Scholar-Gentry: A Study of Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use, a Medical Text of Koryŏ from the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 56-99
Author(s):  
Oh Chaekun ◽  
Jeon Jongwook ◽  
Kim Sanghyun ◽  
Yi Kiebok ◽  
Shin Dong-won
Keyword(s):  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Integrated Medicine ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Treatment Methods ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Medical Text ◽  
The Government

Abstract Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use (K. Hyang’yak Kugŭppang 鄕藥救急方) is the oldest medical text extant on the Korean Peninsula and known to have been compiled during the latter half of the Koryŏ 高麗 dynasty (918–1392 ce). The key value of this work lies in the dissemination and praxis of medical knowledge. First, the author used annotations in order to record Koryŏ people’s pronunciations of the names of medicinal ingredients and symptoms introduced in the main body of the text. In addition, he made use of actual empirical cases to enhance the persuasiveness of treatment methods and integrated medicine newly introduced from Song 宋 China (960–1279) into medicine familiarly used from before. Finally, he edited this text with a focus on important and simple yet efficacious treatment methods. The book continued to be used steadily following publication. It was additionally printed no fewer than twice by the government of the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–1910), which ousted Koryŏ, with its clinical usefulness heightened through the supplementation of explanations on medicinal ingredients use in these processes. In particular, the quotation of sentences from Prescriptions for Emergency Use in medical texts published by the Chosŏn government implies that the utility of the medical knowledge in this work was amply acknowledged. The intended readership of the medical information in Prescriptions for Emergency Use was the not the general populace who lived in the Korean Peninsula in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. They not only lacked the financial means to pay physicians but also were illiterate, so that they could not even read medical texts. In order for this work to be effective, it was necessary for it to address those who could read medical texts and put their contents into practice. In the end, the author of this book assumed scholar-gentry equipped with academic knowledge as its readers and sought to provide medical information tailored to their level and to realize medical service through them. Through this work, it is possible to see in a very concrete and vivid manner how medical knowledge was disseminated and, furthermore, how medical knowledge thus disseminated was put to use in an era when medical resources were insufficient.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document