Accuracy of Dioscorides,' De materia medica (First Century C.E.), Regarding Diuretic Activity of Plants.

OBJECTIVES: Assess whether an ancient text on herbal medicine accurately characterizes a class of herbal diuretics. DESIGN: The Greek text of Dioscorides De materia medica was assessed for herbs stated to have diuretic activity, and then modern research was sought to determine how accurate the ancient assessment of these herbs was. RESULTS: Of the 105 plants cited as having diuretic activity by Dioscorides, 56 (53.3%) genuses are confirmed as being diuretic in animal or human research. For another 38 (36.2%) genuses, no research related to diuresis could be identified. Six (5.7%) genuses had mixed results in modern research, whereas a mere 5 (4.8%) genuses were shown to not have diuretic activity. Considering the 67 genuses that were investigated, 56 (83.6%) were confirmed. CONCLUSION: This analysis confirms that Dioscorides was accurate in determining the diuretic nature of herbs, raising the possibility that he was right about other therapeutic suggestions concerning herbs he made. For the remaining herbs that have not been assessed for diuretic effect, it is not yet known if Dioscorides was accurate. Our findings suggest that the 38 herbs Dioscorides categorized as diuretics that have not been studied for diuretic function are candidates for research in this regard.

Food and medicines in the Mediterranean tradition. A systematic analysis of the earliest extant body of textual evidence.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: The relationship between food and medicines has long been investigated and is of crucial importance for the understanding of the development of ethnopharmacological knowledge through time. Hippocrates, considered the Father of Medicine, is credited with an aphorism equating food and medicine. No inquiry has been performed, however, into the collection of texts attributed to Hippocrates and, going beyond, into this statement, which is generally accepted without further examination. A clarification is much needed as the question of the relationship between food and medicines as potent substances are crucial to ethnopharmacology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To verify the validity (if not the authenticity) of the theory on the identity of food and medicine attributed to Hippocrates, we digitized the whole collection of texts ascribed to Hippocrates in the original Greek language (the so-called Hippocratic Collection), which date back from the age of Hippocrates (late 5th century and 4th century BCE) to a more recent time (2nd century CE). On this basis, we extracted and databased all the information related to remedial therapy, that is, their materia medica (vegetable, animal and mineral) and their use(s). We identified both the plant species according to modern up-to-date taxonomy and the medical conditions as precisely as possible. We then screened these plants to discover what their uses were and, going backward in time, we examined (when possible) their native distribution, domestication, possible introduction (in the case of non-native species) and cultivation to determine whether these species had been known for a long time and might have been the object of long-term observation as both foodstuffs and medicines. RESULTS: Tabulated data from the Hippocratic Collection revealed that 40% of the remedies in the Collection are made out of only 44 plants. Of this group, 33 species (=75% of the group) were also used for nutritional purposes in Antiquity. Domestication history of these species indicates that humans have long been in contact with them, something that the medical uses of these species confirm, as they are multiple and finely distinguished. A pilot analysis of archeological remains of medicines confirms that textual evidence corresponds to physical evidence, that is, to the practice of medicine. As a consequence, textual information can be accepted as reflecting actual practice. CONCLUSIONS: Although the pseudo-aphorism according to which food are medicines and medicines are food does not appear as such in the Hippocratic Collection, it aptly expresses a fundamental element of the Hippocratic approach to therapeutics, without being, however, a creation of neither Hippocrates nor his followers and the physicians who practiced a form of medicine in the way of Hippocrates. A vast majority of the core group of plant species used for the preparation of medicines were also consumed as foodstuff. Knowledge and use of these plants probably resulted from a long co-existence in the same environment and also from multiple experiences of trial and error over millennia, whose results accumulated over time and contributed to the formation of the Mediterranean medical tradition.

Knowledge of Eastern materia medica (Indian and Chinese) in pre-modern Mediterranean medical traditions: a study in comparative historical ethnopharmacology.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Transmission of ethnopharmacological knowledge over a long period of time and across a vast area or between botanically or culturally/scientifically unrelated regions of the world is a fundamental issue in ethnopharmacology, as it traces continuity and transformation(s) of the data to be submitted to analysis for evaluation. In the context of present interest in Eastern medicine (particularly Indian and Chinese), we ask questions about the transmission of knowledge from the East to the Mediterranean. In the first part, we survey available literature on trade between the two areas and, in the second, we present preliminary micro-cases (data, analysis and interpretation) in order to verify the feasibility of a comparative study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Based on the assumption of native areas of origin and/or domestication of plants and one other natural product (musk), we have screened relevant sources (pharmacological literature) in the original language searching for explicit information about Indian and/or Chinese materia medica. We have concentrated our attention on knowledge of the origin of the materia medica under study, their therapeutic applications, the explanations provided for their activity, and the knowledge of the living plants and animals as demonstrated through their representations. RESULTS: Relevant data come from the Hippocratic Collection in ancient Greece (5th century B.C.E.) to the Renaissance in the 16th century. The corpus of materia medica and drugs collected in this preliminary study include pepper and myrrh (5th century B.C.E.), ginger (1st century C.E.), a dozen plants and drugs in the period 9th to 13th century (e.g. camphor, clove, galanga, nutmeg), cinnamon (11th century and later), eggplant, banana tree and musk (13th-16th century). Whereas the Eastern origin of such products was known, the exact area was not always. Judging from their representations, the plants and animals producing the drugs studied here were not necessarily known. Compared therapeutic uses of the drugs did not correspond to those in the area of origin, even though some knowledge of such original uses was preserved. CONCLUSIONS: This study warrants the very possibility of a comparative analysis of different historical pharmacological traditions. It highlights both continuities and innovations in the transmission of information from the East (India and China) to the Mediterranean, suggests interpretations on the processes brought to light and opens the door to a further systematic study that will expand the documentary corpus, collect additional material, and also confirm and refine our interpretations. Such an approach is expected to play a fundamental role in the collection of historical ethnopharmacological data and to be applicable to traditions other than the Eastern and Mediterranean ones.

A 15th-century treatise on kidney affections and their treatment? A first approach.

Two Greek manuscripts have preserved a short treatise On the Diagnosis of Kidney Pathologies and Their Treatment attributed to Galen. In the present article, I study the content of this work and suggest that it may describe the effect of gout on the kidneys, unless it describes pseudogout, that is, chondrocalsinosis of kidneys. On this basis, I suggest that the treatise is not by Galen, but by the 15th-century Byzantine physician Dêmêtrios Pepagômenos.

Kidney dysfunction, from the Arabic to the Byzantine world in 11th and 12th century southern Italy.

Greek classical medicine was not transmitted directly from classical antiquity to the Western Middle Ages by a continuous tradition, but passed through the Arabic world, where it had been preserved thanks to translations from Syriac and/or Greek into Arabic. From the Arabic world, Greek medicine arrived to the West, through the Greek- or the Latin-speaking communities in Sicily and the mainland, respectively. Remarkably enough, the scientific content of the text was scrupulously respected.

Byzantine medical manuscripts: towards a new catalogue, with a specimen for an annotated checklist of manuscripts based on an index of Diels' Catalogue.

Greek manuscripts containing medical texts were inventoried at the beginning of the 20th century by a team of philologists under the direction of Hermann Diels. The resulting catalogue, however useful it was when new and still is today, needs to be updated not only because some manuscripts have been destroyed, certain collections and single items have changed location, new shelfmark systems have been sometimes adopted and cataloguing has made substantial progress, but also because in Diels' time the concept of ancient medicine was limited, the method used in compiling data was not standardized and, in a time of manual recording and handling of information, mistakes could not be avoided. The present article is an introduction to a new catalogue of Greek medical manuscripts. In the first part, it surveys the history of the heuristic and cataloguing of Greek medical manuscripts from the 16th century forward; in the second part, it highlights the problems in Diels' catalogue and describes the genesis and methods of the new catalogue, together with the plan for its completion; and in the third part, it provides a sample of such a new catalogue, with a list of the Greek medical manuscripts in the libraries of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Foreign vs. local new horizons, and ancient dilemmas and strategies?

Capitalizing on the data presented in the three papers in this issue, the comments and conclusions here elaborate on the concept of transfer of knowledge in the field of materia medica and pharmacy. They evidence different mechanisms in three contexts, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western world and China, and trace the possible ancient roots of the phenomena under consideration. In so doing, they contextualize the processes under study in the three essays, and suggest also a possible new interpretation of the practice of science from the Late Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution.

[Pietro d'Abano on venoms and poisons]. / Pietro d'Abano sui veleni tradizione medievale e fonti greche.

The Treatise on Venoms and Poisons (Liber de venenis) by Pietro d'Abano has been traditionally considered as a collection of superstitions and unscientific data, even though it was also--and paradoxically--deemed interesting for the history of medieval science. The present contribution frames the treatise in the ancient toxicological literature, and suggests textual similarities with classical Greek works, mainly the two treatises On Venoms and On Poisons ascribed to the first-century A.D. author of De materia medica Dioscorides. Since Pietro d'Abano sojourned in Constantinople he might have had access to the Greek texts of these two works and could very well have integrated some of their information in his own treatise.

The kidney from Galen to Vesalius -- a first approach.

In 1543, Andreas Vesalius (1514 - ca. 1564) published de Humani corporis fabrica in Basel (Basel, 1543). In current literature, the work is interpreted as either an imitation or a refutation of previous anatomical knowledge, particularly the treatises by the classical Greek physician Galen (129 -- after 216 A.D. [?]). In this paper we focus on Vesalius' study of the kidneys (Book V, chapter 10). On the basis of a comparison of Vesalius' and Galen's Greek text, we reach the conclusion that Vesalius closely reproduced Galen's model and text, thus re-enacting the ancient practice of medicine and dissection.

The origins of Western herbal medicines for kidney diseases.

This article gathers the data on the plants used for the treatment of pathologies of kidneys and the urinary tract from the most ancient medical texts of classical antiquity, the Corpus Hippocraticum , the Aristotelian Problems , and De Materia Medica by Dioscorides. If hippocratic information is scant and practical, aristotelian are of a more theoretical nature and propose an explanation of the action of drugs on the urinary tract. De Materia Medica , coming after a possible research activity in the Alexandrian School, reports the action of many drugs. The work had a deep influence on the subsequent centuries, up to the birth of modern pharmacochemistry.

Arabic urology in Byzantium.

Byzantine manuscripts contain texts that are explicitly presented--or can be identified--as translations from Arabic. The present article offers a general description of these texts and a first approach to their urological contents.

The diuretic use of Scilla from Dioscorides to the end of the 18th century.

Ancient texts contain an extremely large and readily accessible body of information on traditional medicine describing a range of plants and other substances that have been recently investigated systematically. However, prospecting for drugs from herbals raises problems with philology and plant identification. We combined our expertise to re-examine Squill an ancient medicinal plant which deserves modern scientific investigation. For this, invaluable help has come from new computer technologies which allow access to the most important libraries of the History of Medicine.

The pre-Vesalian kidney: Gabriele Zerbi, 1445-1505.

Gabriel Zerbi was born in Verona in 1445 and died in Dalmatia in 1505. He was professor of philosophy in Padua at the age of 22, and moved to Bologna where he became professor of medicine and philosophy. In Rome at the time of Sixtus V and Innocentius VIII, he was archiater and professor of medicine. He completed his academic career in Padua where he worked from 1494 to 1505 with a salary of 600 florins a month. A man of vast culture, a philosopher, physician and professor of medicine, he wrote many books: (1) Questiones Metaphysicae; (2) Gerentocomia; (3) De Cautelis Medicorum; (4) Liber anatomiae corporis humani et singulorum membrorum illius; (5) De anatomia infantiis et porci ex traditione Cophonis, and (6) Libellus de preservatione corporum a passione calculosa. His contribution to anatomy was superb. Through him the discipline became the basis of modern medicine. The core of this article deals with some passages of Zerbi's chapters on the anatomy of the kidneys and bladder.