Greek Medical Literature and its Readers

Petros Bouras-Vallianatos is Wellcome Lecturer in History of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, UKSophia Xenophontos is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow, UK

‘Through nine chapters focusing on authors spreading from Hippocrates to the medieval readers of Galen, and covering such diverse areas as classical Greece, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, the volume offers an interesting array of concise case studies...The editors’ work must be commended for a coherent collection of chapters, with a clear focus and helpful pointers and bibliographies. It is also produced to a high standard. The collection will be especially useful to medical historians with a focus on ancient Greek medicine and its afterlife’ - Caroline Petit, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 94, Number 3 (Fall 2020)‘... this volume enriches the bibliography and adds a significant title to the research into the complexities of Greek medical writings from the fifth century BC down to the fourteenth century AD, their reception and their influence on various intellectual milieus. Anyone interested in Greek medical tradition will gain a great profit from the book.’ - Maria Chrone, Byzantina Symmeikta 30 (2020)‘The present volume does a good job in showing how, while claiming its status as an individual technê, ancient medicine remains sensitive to its sharedness and openness across a stratified audience whose members have different skills, needs and expectations... the volume deals with a novel – and thorny – subject, and for that it should be praised.’ - George Kazantzidis, The Classical Review 69.2 (2019)‘[T]he editors have brought together some interesting articles ... These new collections of articles on a single topic have the advantage of making it easier for other scholars to locate relevant studies.’ - Timothy S. Miller, Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2018.07.30)

• Introduction, Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Sophia Xenophontos PART I The Classical World 1. Alcmaeon and His Addressees: Revisiting the Incipit, Stavros Kouloumentas 2. Gone with the Wind: Laughter and the Audience of the Hippocratic Treatises, Laurence Totelin 3. The Professional Audiences of the Hippocratic Epidemics: Patient Cases in Hippocratic Scientific Communication, Chiara Thumiger PART II The Imperial World 4. Galen’s Exhortation to the Study of Medicine: An Educational Work for Prospective Medical Students, Sophia Xenophontos 5. An Interpretation of the Preface to Medical Puzzles and Natural Problems 1 by Ps.-Alexander of Aphrodisias in Light of Medical Education, Michiel Meeusen PART III The Islamic World 6. The User-Friendly Galen: Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq and the Adaptation of Greek Medicine for a New Audience, Uwe Vagelpohl 7. Medical Knowledge as Proof of the Creator’s Wisdom and the Arabic Reception of Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts, Elvira Wakelnig PART IV The Byzantine World 8. Physician versus Physician: Comparing the Audience of On the Constitution of Man by Meletios and Epitome on the Nature of Men by Leo the Physician, Erika Gielen 9. Reading Galen in Byzantium: The Fate of Therapeutics to Glaucon, Petros Bouras-Vallianatos