Interpreting materia medica. A case study on Ioannes Archiatrus

Abstract

Background Premodern medical texts are an invaluable source for scholars from humanities and sciences. However, they are usually not accessible as few scientists with an interest in premodern materia medica are also qualified philologists. Therefore, a balance has to be struck to translate these texts while preserving information on how reliable we believe a given translation to be. In this paper, we conduct a case study on the vernacular version of Ioannes archiatrus. Methods The present study forms part of the output of a multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award combining humanities and sciences. We deployed a multi-layer tagging system to systematise pharmaceutical terminology and to translate these terms while providing confidence factors for individual words. In a second step, we used AntConc, a freeware concordance software, to analyse our primary source and visualise patterns in the text. Results Our methodology created a readable text that made it possible for the reader to check confidence factors. It also allows our translation and tagging to be recycled for further research. Conclusions Our methods provide a tool that allows to balance the need to translate and the necessary caution about translated plant and mineral names. Our approach is transferable and it can be modified to suit the needs of other primary sources.

Dermatological plants and their uses in theReceptariumof Burkhard III from Hallwyl from 16thcentury Switzerland – Data mining a historical text and preliminaryin vitroscreening

“…In the majority of the cases, the vocabulary used in RBH to describe the skin problems to be treated by the recipes allowed us to draw possible conclusions about the underlying medical complaint. In this respect, our findings are in line with observations from other historical recipe books (see e.g., Zipser et al, 2023): The writers of these manuscripts often provide detailed descriptions of the skin problem in question or use specific disease terms on which an interpretation can be based.…”

“…In contrast to other health conditions, applications on the skin described in ancient or medieval recipe texts allow us to draw conclusions about the presumed disease being treated in a comparatively straightforward way. As illustrated by a 13th century Byzantine recipe text, the writers of these manuscripts often provide specific details about the skin problem to be treated by a certain recipe (Zipser et al, 2023). Uses such as "if the scar of a wound gets back", "if it happens in a wound that worms are developing", "paronychitis, an abscess that arises next to the root of the nail", point to poorly healing and infected wounds or inflammations of the skin.…”