A Cretan Healer's Handbook in the Byzantine Tradition : Text, Translation and Commentary - Patricia Ann Clark

A Cretan Healer's Handbook in the Byzantine Tradition

Text, Translation and Commentary

By: Patricia Ann Clark

Hardcover | 28 November 2011

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $305.00

$215.80

29%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $53.95 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 7 to 10 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

In 1930 the Cretan healer Nikolaos Konstantinos Theodorakis of Meronas re-copied a notebook containing medical lore passed down through his family over generations. The present volume offers an edition of this notebook together with an English translation, the first of its kind. It belongs to the genre of iatrosophia, practical handbooks dating mainly to the 17th to 19th centuries which compiled healing wisdom, along with snippets of agricultural, meteorological and veterinary advice, and admixtures of religion, astrology and magic. Both fascinating and of critical importance, iatrosophia allow glimpses of classical and Byzantine medical sources and illustrate the vitality and resilience of Greek traditional medical and botanical knowledge. From years spent exploring local healing customs in Crete''s Amari region, Patricia Clark is able to present Theodorakis'' iatrosophion against a rich historical, geographical and social background. Introductory essays and explanatory notes to the translation give context to the iatrosophion and provide the specialized information necessary for a good understanding of the text. The abundant materia medica of the notebook is treated in a substantial appendix. Each animal, mineral, plant or product is provided with an overview of its various names through the millennia. Such entries are not only a key to understanding the Greek medical legacy, but also a vivid illustration of its usage from antiquity to the present day.
Industry Reviews
'This is a valuable and important work of scholarship that looks back to Greek medicine of earlier centuries, as well as subsequent Turkish and Italian influences. Clark has done scholars, of both medieval and early modern medicine, a great service in recording and defining the historical and geographical context of this collection, and the work of its compiler, the village healer Nikolaos Theodorakis.' Bulletin of the History of Medicine '[The book] represents a most valuable addition to the little studied area of iatrosophia... it provides the essential material for future studies on the reception of Byzantine medicine, as well as contemporary medical, social and cultural history.' Social History of Medicine 'Ce qui rend ce cahier interessant pour l'historien est qu'on y retrouve un grand fonds de materiel present dans les iatrosophia d'epoque byzantine, augmente au cours des siecles mais gardant les mA?mes caracteristiques: c'est en quelque sorte de la medecine byzantine continuata. D'autre part, il peut aussi constituer un document appreciable pour l'etude des plantes medicinales, des procedes medicaux, de la flore cretoise. ['What makes this book interesting for the historian is the large collection of material present in the iatrosophia of the Byzantine period, augmented over the centuries but keeping the same characteristics: it is a kind of ongoing Byzantine medicine. On the other hand, it may also be a document useful for the study of medicinal plants, medical procedures, and Cretan flora.'] Revue des etudes byzantines 'As Professor Alain Touwaide (Smithsonian Institution and Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions) states in the foreword of the book, Patricia Ann Clark's contribution is an extra-temporal key to unlock the universe of the many extant Byzantine iatrosophia? in the context of the emerging field of ethnopharmacology and the global history of folk medicine.' Alphaomega

More in European History

Ancestors : A prehistory of Britain in seven burials - Alice Roberts
The Journals of Captain Cook : Penguin Classics - James Cook
The Gulag Archipelago : 1918-56 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

RRP $37.99

$33.90

11%
OFF
Night : Penguin Modern Classics - Elie Wiesel

RRP $22.99

$17.75

23%
OFF
Meditations : The Annotated Edition - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Normal Women : 900 Years Of Making History - Philippa Gregory
Colonialism : A Moral Reckoning - Nigel Biggar

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Unruly : A History of England's Kings and Queens - David Mitchell

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
Blitzed : Drugs in Nazi Germany - Norman Ohler

RRP $22.99

$21.90

The Catalpa Rescue - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
Churchill : Walking with Destiny - Andrew Roberts

RRP $35.00

$31.75

Kokoda : Updated Edition - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $39.99

$32.75

18%
OFF
Band of Brothers - Stephen E. Ambrose

RRP $24.99

$23.75