A systematic methodology to assess the identity of plants in historical texts: A case study based on the Byzantine pharmacy text John the Physician's Therapeutics.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: In recent decades, the study of historical texts has attracted research interest, particularly in ethnopharmacology. All studies of the materia medica cited in ancient and medieval texts share a concern, however, as to the reliability of modern identifications of these substances. Previous studies of European or Mediterranean texts relied mostly on authoritative dictionaries or glossaries providing botanical identities for the historical plant names in question. Several identities they suggest, however, are questionable and real possibility of error exists. AIM OF THE STUDY: This study aims to develop and document a novel and interdisciplinary methodology providing more objective assessment of the identity of the plants (and minerals) described in these resources. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We developed an iterative experimental approach, using the 13th century Byzantine recipe text John the Physician's Therapeutics in its Commentary version (JC) as a case study. The methodology has six stages and relies on comparative analyses including statistical evaluation of botanical descriptions and information about medicinal uses drawn from both historical and modern sources. Stages 1-4 create the dataset, stage 5 derives the primary outcomes to be reviewed by experts in stage 6. RESULTS: Using Disocorides' De Materia Medica (DMM) (1st century CE) as the culturally related reference text for the botanical descriptions of the plants cited in JC, allowed us to link the 194 plants used medicinally in JC with 252 plants cited in DMM. Our test sample for subsequent analyses consisted of the 50 JC plant names (corresponding to 61 DMM plants) for which DMM holds rich morphological information, and the 130 candidate species which have been suggested in the literature as potential botanical identities of those 50 JC plant names. Statistical evaluation of the comparative analyses revealed that in the majority of the cases, our method detected the candidate species having a higher likelihood of being the correct attribution from among the pool of suggested candidates. Final assessment and revision provided a list of the challenges associated with applying our methodology more widely and recommendations on how to address these issues. CONCLUSIONS: We offer this multidisciplinary approach to more evidence-based assessment of the identity of plants in historical texts providing a measure of confidence for each suggested identity. Despite the experimental nature of our methodology and its limitations, its application allowed us to draw conclusions about the validity of suggested candidate plants as well as to distinguish between alternative candidates of the same historical plant name. Fully documenting the methodology facilitates its application to historical texts of any kind of cultural or linguistic background.

Plants and their uses in dermatological recipes of the Receptarium of Burkhard III von Hallwyl from 16th century Switzerland - Data mining a historical text and preliminary in vitro screening.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Historical texts on materia medica can be an attractive source of ethnopharmacological information. Various research groups have investigated corresponding resources from Europe and the Mediterranean region, pursuing different objectives. Regardless of the method used, the indexing of textual information and its conversion into data sets useful for further investigations represents a significant challenge. AIM OF THE STUDY: First, this study aims to systematically catalogue pharmaco-botanical information in the Receptarium of Burkhard von Hallwyl (RBH) in order to identify candidate plants in a targeted manner. Secondly, the potential of RBH as a resource for pharmacological investigations will be assessed by means of a preliminary in vitro screening. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We developed a relational database for the systematic recording of parameters composing the medical recipes contained in the historical text. Focusing on dermatological recipes, we explored the mentioned plants and their uses by drawing on specific literature. The botanical identities (candidate species) suggested in the literature for the historical plant names were rated based on their plausibility of being the correct attribution. The historical uses were interpreted by consulting medical-historical and modern clinical literature. For the subsequent in vitro screening, we selected candidate species used in recipes directed at the treatment of inflammatory or infectious skin disorders and wounds. Plants were collected in Switzerland and their hydroethanolic crude extracts tested for possible cytotoxic effects and for their potential to modulate the release of IL-6 and TNF in PS-stimulated whole blood and PBMCs. RESULTS: The historical text analysis points up the challenges associated with the assessment of historical plant names. Often two or more plant species are available as candidates for each of the 161 historical plant names counted in the 200 dermatological recipes in RBH. On the other hand, our method enabled to draw conclusions about the diseases underlying the 56 medical applications mentioned in the text. On this basis, 11 candidate species were selected for in vitro screening, four of which were used in RBH in herbal simple recipes and seven in a herbal compound formulation. None of the extracts tested showed a noteworthy effect on cell viability except for the sample of Sanicula europaea L. Extracts were tested at 50 µg/mL in the whole blood assay, where especially Vincetoxicum hirundinaria Medik. or Solanum nigrum L. showed inhibitory or stimulatory activities. In the PBMC assay, the root of Vincetoxicum hirundinaria revealed a distinct inhibitory effect on IL-6 release (IC50 of 3.6 µg/mL). CONCLUSIONS: Using the example of RBH, this study illustrates a possible ethnopharmacological path from unlocking the historical text and its subsequent analysis, through the selection and collection of plant candidates to their in vitro investigation. Fully documenting our approach to the analysis of historical texts, we hope to contribute to the discussion on solutions for the digital indexing of premodern information on the use of plants or other natural products.

[A short history of anti-rheumatic therapy. I. An introduction on traditional and drug treatments]. / Piccola storia della terapia antireumatica. I. Una premessa sulle terapie tradizionali e farmacologiche.

The origins of anti-rheumatic therapy are very old and mainly related to the use of traditional, sometimes extravagant, treatments, as a part of folk medicine. Spa therapy has long been used for the treatment of rheumatic diseases, as well as, in later times, physical treatments, including electrotherapy. Drug treatment has developed beginning from substances of vegetable origin, such as willow and colchicum extracts. Then it has been spread out through the chemical synthesis of compounds with specific action and therefore more effective, owing to the great development of pharmaceutical industry.

Armenian medicine and diseases of the kidney.

The history of Armenian medicine is that of the common practice of medicine in caring for the sick through the ages, using mainly local medicinal herbs and natural products. Over the years, its practitioners persistently collected and recorded an expanding body of information on therapeutics and put it to use for the daily medical care of ordinary folks. Armenian medicine developed around the church and monasteries, which flourished during episodic periods of peace in an otherwise tumultuous and warring region. However, unlike the monastic medicine that developed in Europe, Armenian medicine maintained the rationality it had acquired from Greek medicine, and never resorted to magic, myth or amulets. Nor did it acquire or import saints. Armenian medicine is a classic example of the evolving art of therapeutics, whose record is preserved in extant manuscripts, saved over the centuries in monasteries, and now preserved in accessible collections.

A comparison of medicinal plant use in Sardinia and Sicily-De Materia Medica revisited?

AIM OF THE STUDY: Written records of oral medical traditions have had significant impact on the development of medicine and the pharmacopoeias. Modern ethnobotanical studies in Europe and the Mediterranean region, however, have so far largely overlooked the richness and accuracy of historic sources and ignored their probable influence on the development of today's local traditional medicines. Here, we explore the common fundament of traditional knowledge for the medicinal plant uses in Sardinia and Sicily by comparing the selection of medicinal species and specific uses with those of Dioscorides' De Materia Medica. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We use (i) a quantification of citations for medicinal species mentioned in ethnobotanical studies conducted in Sardinia and Sicily (ii) a comparison of the flora and medicinal flora with a chi(2)-test (iii) a binomial approach recently introduced into ethnobotany (iv) a comparison of the most frequently used species with the indications cited in Dioscorides' De Materia Medica (v) and a crosscheck of all mentioned species with their appearance in Berendes' translation of De Materia Medica. RESULTS: We identified a core group of 170 medicinal species used on either islands, which accumulate 74% of all citations and are best represented in De Materia Medica. The 15 most frequently used species of both islands demonstrate intriguing parallels for indications with Dioscorides' work. CONCLUSION: The ethnopharmacopoeia of Sicily and Sardinia are shallow stereotypes of the different editions of De Materia Medica and talking of oral tradition in this respect is a contradiction. The medicinal species of Sardinia and Sicily are largely widespread and common species, including many weeds, which are not facing threat of extinction. Therefore, using traditional medicinal practices as an argument for conservation biology or vice versa is not scientifically sound.

"Fossils" of practical medical knowledge from medieval Cairo.

AIM OF THE STUDY: To asses the scientific value of the practical medical fragments found in the Cairo Genizah (10th century), as a useful source for ethnopharmacological purposes (in exposing rare and usually inaccessible original medieval practical knowledge of medicinal substances to present-day researchers), and to reconstruct the practical drugs and their uses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A methodology distinguishing between theoretical (about 1500 fragments) and practical medical knowledge (about 230 fragments) was created and used. The information regarding the practical medicinal substances was extracted from prescriptions (140), lists of drugs (70) and few letters of physicians. RESULTS: The reconstructed lists of practical (278) and theoretical (414) drugs allow us to recognize and quantify the gap between them in medieval times (136). CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the data obtained from ancient prescriptions is comparable to ethnopharmacological surveys. The finding of plants such as myrobalan, saffron, licorice, spikenard and lentisk, all of which have scientifically proven anti-microbial/bacterial and anti-fungal activity, sheds a helpful light on the medical decision-making of the medieval practitioners in respect of the plants they applied as drugs. With the wealth of information meticulously assembled from these time capsules we expect to make a significant contribution to contemporary efforts at locating modern drugs in ancient roots and gauging their feasibility.

Drugs held and sold by pharmacists of the Jewish community of medieval (11-14th centuries) Cairo according to lists of materia medica found at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collection, Cambridge.

The importance of the Genizah for the research of the medieval Mediterranean communities, supplying information on almost every aspect of life, is well known among historian. Less known is that pharmacy was the most popular of all branches of the healing art in the medieval Jewish community of Cairo, according to the Genizah manuscripts. Sources for study of medieval practical drugs are extremely rare since most records naturally vanish over the years, and only some medical books, which contained theoretical pharmacology, have survived to the present day. Drugs lists enable us to understand medieval practical pharmacy and to reconstruct their inventories. This study reports on 71 original drugs lists that were found in the Genizah; they are different from merchants' letters dealing with commerce in drugs and give no instructions for the use or preparation of formulas as usually found in prescriptions. Twenty-six lists are written in Judeo-Arabic and 45 in Arabic, none of the lists is written in Hebrew. The longest list contains 63 identified substances. These lists were apparently used by pharmacists for professional and business purposes as inventories of drugs, records, orders, or even receipts. Two hundred and six different drugs are mentioned in the drugs lists of which 167 are of plant origin, 16 are of animal origin, and the remaining 23 are inorganic. The lists point directly to the place they occupied on the shelves of the pharmacies that could be found in the lanes and alleys of the Jewish quarter of Cairo. The most frequently mentioned substance were myrobalan (27), pepper and saffron (21), lentisk (15), almond, basil, rose, rosemary (14), cattle products, camphor and spikenard (13).

Reconstruction of the inventory of materia medica used by members of the Jewish community of medieval Cairo according to prescriptions found in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collection, Cambridge.

The Taylor-Schechter (T-S) collection at Cambridge University Library is the biggest of all Cairo Genizah collections in the world. The importance and the potential of research into the medical aspects of the Genizah documents were clear to researcher since the early 1960s. A few works have been published since, usually focusing on one subject, or even important single manuscripts. The current research concerned mainly with one aspect of the history of medicine of the Jewish community of Cairo (as a reflection of Eastern medieval societies), namely the practical uses of natural substances for medicine. The most interesting and original information is undoubtedly to be found in the 141 prescriptions, as they reflect the medical reality that actually existed. And indeed, 242 substances were recorded in the prescriptions identified: 195 substances of plants origin (80.6%), 27 inorganic materials (11.2%) and 20 substances of animal origin (8.2%) were recorded as being in practical used for medicinal purposes. The most frequently mentioned substances were the rose, myrobalan, sugar, almonds, and endive. The most prevalent ailments: eye diseases, headache, constipations (purgative), cough, skin diseases, stomach, fever, gynaecological problems, haemorrhoids, liver ailments, lice, swellings, dental trouble, ulcers, and problems of the urinary tract.

Back to the roots: A quantitative survey of herbal drugs in Dioscorides' De Materia Medica (ex Matthioli, 1568).

BACKGROUND: De Materia Medica written by Pedanios Dioscorides (1 century CE) has shaped European and Mediterranean herbal medicine to a large extent. Despite its fundamental importance for modern medico-botanical traditions the content of this work has never been systematically assessed. PURPOSE: We present a quantitative survey of the botanical drugs described in De Materia Medica (ex Matthioli, 1568) and identify overall therapeutic, diachronic and botanical patterns. The extracted data may serve as a baseline and help to better contextualize research on herbal drugs and phytotherapy. METHODS: Therapeutic uses of herbal drugs were extracted through line-by-line reading of a digitized version of the treatise. For each plant usage mentioned in the text we recorded (I) the chapter number, (II) the putative botanical identity, (III) the plant part, (IV) the symptoms or disease, (V) the mode of administration, (VI) our biomedical interpretation of the ancient ailment or disease description as well as (VII) the organ- and symptom-defined category under which the use was filed. SECTIONS: An introduction to Dioscorides' De Materia Medica and Matthioli's Renaissance commentary is followed by a description of the employed methodology. The results and discussion section introduces the generated database comprising 5314 unique therapeutic uses of 536 plant taxa and 924 herbal drugs. Separate subsections address salient patterns such as the frequent recommendation of Fabaceae seeds for dermatology, Apiaceae seeds as antidotes and Apiaceae exudates for neurology and psychosomatic disorders as well as the heavy reliance on subterranean parts as drugs. CONCLUSIONS: The therapeutic knowledge described in De Materia Medica (ex Matthioli, 1568) offers unique insights into classical Mediterranean epidemiology and herbal medicine. Drugs that lost importance over time as well as remedies used for diseases now controlled by preventive medicine and industrially produced drugs may be interesting starting points for research on herbal medicine and drug discovery. Apart from promoting future data mining, the study may also help to prove the tradition of use, which is required for the regulatory approval of certain herbal products.

Reconstructed materia medica of the Medieval and Ottoman al-Sham.

This article presents the results of a study of the medicinal uses of natural substances in medieval and Ottoman al-Sham (the Levant). It involved a meticulous survey of a wide range of historical sources spanning approximately 1100 years and including medical and pharmacological literature, travelogues, geographical and agricultural literature, dictionaries, archives, the Genizah and other medieval sources. Our main goal was to arrive at a reconstruction of the unwritten materia medica of the medieval and Ottoman Levant. Of the many and varied medicinal substances on which we were able to extract information, we were able to identify 286. These are presented according to the following classification: 234 species of plants (81.8%); 27 species of animals (9.5%); 15 kinds of minerals (5.2%) and 10 substances of other or mixed origin (3.5%). Analysis of the data showed that the region under study served as the geographic origin of the majority of the substances, only a minority of the materials was imported. The main reason for this is the geographic location of the Levant as a junction between three continents, as a cultural meeting point and as trade center. Finally, our data revealed that the al-Sham region was an independent source of production and marketing of medicinal substances during the medieval and Ottoman periods.

Epilepsy in the Renaissance: a survey of remedies from 16th and 17th century German herbals.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Before modern anticonvulsive drugs were developed people in central Europe used herbal remedies to treat epilepsy. Hundreds of different plants for this indication can be found in German herbals of the 16th and 17th centuries. Here we compile these plants and discuss their use from a pharmacological perspective. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine of the most important European herbals of the 16th and 17th century including Bock (1577), Fuchs (1543), Mattioli (1590), Lonicerus (1660, 1770), Brunfels (1532), Zwinger (1696), and Tabernaemontanus (1591, 1678) were searched for terms related to epilepsy, and plants and recipes described for its treatment were documented. We then searched scientific literature for pharmacological evidence of their effectiveness. Additionally the overlapping of these remedies with those in De Materia Medica by the Greek physician Dioscorides was studied. RESULTS: Two hundred twenty one plants were identified in the herbals to be used in the context of epilepsy. In vitro and/or in vivo pharmacological data somehow related to the indication epilepsy was found for less than 5% of these plants. Less than 7% of epilepsy remedies are in common with De Materia Medica. CONCLUSIONS: Numerous plants were used to treat epilepsy in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, few of these plants have been investigated with respect to pharmacological activity on epilepsy related targets.

From rustics to savants: indigenous materia medica in eighteenth-century Mexico.

This essay explores how indigenous knowledge about plant and animal remedies was gathered, classified, tested, and circulated across wide networks of exchange for natural knowledge between Europe and the Americas. There has been much recent interest in the "bioprospecting" of local natural resources-medical and otherwise-by Europeans in the early modern world and the strategies employed by European travellers, missionaries, or naturalists have been well documented. By contrast, less is known about the role played by indigenous and Creole intermediaries in this process. And yet, the transmission of knowledge between indigenous communities and the European cabinet was neither transparent nor natural, and often involved epistemological, linguistic, and religious obstacles. Drawing on printed and manuscript collections of indigenous remedies, written in colonial Mexico between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, I focus on how local intermediaries, like creoles scholars, sought to overcome such obstacles by observing indigenous uses of remedies, by studying indigenous languages and by producing natural histories and pharmacopoeias in indigenous languages. Ultimately, behind the Creole participation in the transmission of indigenous remedies, one can point to political and cultural interests and to inclusive definitions of knowledge, which cut across oppositions between science and superstition, cabinet and field, centre and periphery.

European materia medica in historical texts: longevity of a tradition and implications for future use.

AIM OF THE STUDY: This study uses historical texts in order to obtain information on the natural products used in traditional medicines in European/Mediterranean therapeutics over the last two millennia. The information obtained may lead to new directions in the area of drug discovery, as recent research has demonstrated the continued promise of looking to natural products for bioactive compounds. Researchers have increasingly turned to traditional medicines to provide clues as to which natural products to investigate, but the oral traditions on which much of this medical knowledge rests are often unstable. Thus researchers have been prompted to use historical medical texts, as this study does, to find potential sources of new drugs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study uses twelve Mediterranean/European medical texts from the 5th century BC to the 19th century AD to compile a list of the most commonly used "simples"--or single action drugs substances--used in therapeutics in traditional European medicine. This list was then compared to present-day herbal pharmacopoeia as represented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). RESULTS: This study finds that traditional European materia medica was based on a Dioscoridean tradition that lasted through the 19th century with remarkably little variation, but is significantly different from the present-day herbal pharmacopoeia according to the NIH. CONCLUSIONS: The most prominent simples in the European/Mediterranean medical tradition can provide clues to further bioactive compounds that have not as of yet been fully exploited for their potential, but were clearly of great use in the past.