[When no doctor is on call. Medical works for lay persons in late antiquity]. / Wenn kein Arzt erreichbar ist - Medizinische Literatur für Laien in der Spatantike.

The article offers a survey of the chief medical texts for lay persons in Latin, followed by a more detailed discussion of two examples, hare's brain for teething troubles and remedies for nosebleed.

[Controversial interpretations of the Lorsch medical codex]. / Das Lorscher Arzneibuch im Widerstreit der Meinungen.

Next to the late Heinrich Schipperges, Gundolf Keil, M.D. and Ph.D. (Medieval German), ranks as one of the foremost German medical historians of the Western Middle Ages. Among his lasting merits is the publication of the MS Bamb. med. 1, called by him Lorscher Arzneibuch (Lorsch Medical Manual), which was written during the first years of the 9th century in the abbey of Lorsch (near Worms). Keil maintained that this work was not only the first medical book copied in the German-speaking area but that it was also drawn up in Lorsch and contained e.g. an unequivocal statement of Carolingian health policy, and that it referred, for the first time in the early Middle Ages, to the therapeutic uses of penicillin, glycosides, and hypericin (an active ingredient of St John's wort). Such interpretations will be scrutinized and challenged in the following article.

[(German drinking song:"Who never was drunk")- a letter from the physician Mnesitheos and a commentary by Magister Bona Fortuna]. / "Wer niemals einen Rausch gehabt..." - Ein Brief des Arztes Mnesitheos und ein Kommentar von Magister Bona Fortuna.

Getting drunk regularly is a recommendation we find expressed both in the work of the 4th century B.C. physician Mnesitheos and in a commentary on Constantine the African's Viaticum by a 13th century university teacher, Magister Bona Fortuna, evidently under the influence of Avicenna. The article provides German translations of the source texts and briefly comments on their content. An outline is given of the way Mnesitheos' writings were handed down to later centuries, showing the great renown this important writer on dietetics enjoyed even in Imperial times, possibly influencing writers whose works were translated into Arabic. An excerpt from Magister Bona Fortuna's commentary is published in the Apprendix.