A source book of Indian medicine: an anthology

Macedonian tribe, whose name Tzetzes used instead of the unmetrical "Macedonia". In the quotation, p. 55, from On theriac to Piso, a word which must postdate AD 204, Pinault fails to realize that the author (Galen?) used the semi-religious work "£C1iantgv6iv" ("let drops of incense fall", an emendation already implied in the Latin of Kuhn and made long ago by Cobet). The discussion of Aetius' "zeal for theoretical consistency", p. 56, is somewhat marred by the fact that the words complained of were those of Oribasius, two hundred years earlier. Irritating misprints abound, and at crucial times precision of language is lacking. Non-arabists, however, will welcome the Arabic Lives in a clear English translation (but, p. 135, I prefer Filatus (Petos) as a "leading man", not "king" of Cos; and, p. 140, qiyas (logic=Greek logos) is unduly restricted to "analogical reasoning"). However, readers are often left without proper help, or sent on a wild goose chase. There is no mention of Franz Rosenthal's History of Muslim historiography, essential for understanding the whole genre of Arabic biography (cf. also JHM, 1973, 28: 156-65), or of the detailed examination of Ishaq's chronology of Hippocrates (p. 101ff.) by Fritz Zimmermann in Arabica, 1974, 21. The Hippocratic sayings in both Lives should have been compared with those edited and translated by Carmela Baffioni in Elenchos, 1987, 8: 411-18.Contrary to p. 112, ar-Ruhawi took his tale of the cure for love-sickness direct from the pages of Galen (see CMG V 8.1, p. 54), and, given the notorious sloppiness of Levey's edition, there is at least a suspicion that ar-Ruhawi's doctor was indeed Erasistratus, not Aristotle. The European-wide reputation of al-Mubassir's collection of Dicts and sayings can best be traced in C. F. Biihler's magisterial edition of the medieval English translation (Early English Text Society, vol. 211, 1941, repr. 1961), another work not cited here. Most serious of all, although Pinault, p. 122, rightly posits a lost, and possibly Galenic, intermediary between the Greek and Arabic traditions, she is unaware that part of it has been in print (and in translation) for over thirty years. In BHM, 1956, 30, Franz Rosenthal published several sections of a Galenic commentary on the Hippocratic Oath (reprinted in his Science and medicine in Islam, 1990), which was later confirmed by Gotthard Strohmaier as a genuine work of Galen. Here is the missing link, and a major source for the Arabic understanding of the Hippocratic legend, but readers of this book will find no hint of its existence. In short, Pinault has led us to the foot of an exotic mountain. There is a long way still to climb, but interesting views can be guaranteed to those brave enough to go further.