Byzantine Medicine

The study of medicine in the Byzantine Empire between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries has a long and complicated history. To properly assess and examine medical theory and practice in Byzantium, one must consider a variety of textual and archaeological sources. Among the medical texts, there is a continuous tendency to produce manuals containing practical details on diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease in synoptic form. From Oribasios in the fourth century to John Zacharias Aktouarios in the fourteenth, each author produced a different work according to his own inclinations and trends in the relevant period. Specialized works on particular topics of medical interest, such as the examination of the pulse, uroscopy, anatomy, human physiology, diet, and pharmacology were also authored throughout the Byzantine period. Certainly the most innovative field of Byzantine medicine was that of uroscopy, where authors such as Theophilos (seventh or ninth century) and John Zacharias Aktouarios made important advancements and their works, once translated into Latin, had widespread influence over the medical theories and practices associated with the single most important premodern diagnostic and prognostic technique in medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Europe. Another significant genre of medical texts is that of the iatrosophia, which are written in a straightforward way, so that they can be used in daily practice, even by non-experts, and which contain information on diagnosis and treatment of diseases by simple means. An important dimension of Byzantine medicine is the significant transfer of knowledge, especially from the Islamicate world, that penetrated medicine and pharmacology from the eleventh century onward. Archaeological work, and especially bioarchaeology, has recently enriched our understanding of Byzantine health care and epidemics, although contact between the various communities of historians and archaeologists is still underdeveloped. The Byzantine Empire was also the birthplace of the premodern ancestors of hospitals with a large variety of charitable health-care institutions active from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. Other important places of healing were certainly the numerous Christian shrines where thousands of patients were miraculously healed through, inter alia, temple sleep (incubation). In fact, the Byzantine marketplace consisted of a diverse group of practitioners, including educated physicians, surgeons, empiricists, midwives, magicians, astrologers, and diviners. Byzantine sources often reported that patients chose to follow more than one healing approach at a time, thus attesting to the complementarity between various forms of therapy. Lastly, Byzantines showed particular concern for the health care of some highly prized animals such as horses, hawks, and dogs, as evidenced in the production of highly specialized veterinary manuals.