Byzantine medicine

The Byzantine medicine, that is the medicine of late antiquity and the Byzantine Empire, is an epoch in medical history that follows the ancient world. The medicine during the Byzantine Empire founded mainly on the ancient tradition. The most important medical works were to about 642 kompilatorischer Art Only after it came to a certain extension by clinical experience. These works were often equipped with detailed medical illustrations and described in detail specific conditions.

First phase of Byzantine medicine ( 395-642 AD)

The first phase of Byzantine medicine extends within the period of the division of the Roman Empire in the year 395 until the conquest of Alexandria in 642

Characterized it is through the compilation, so the collection, collating, copying the ancient knowledge. One consequence of these compilations was the simplification and dissemination of medical knowledge of Hippocrates, Galen and other authors of that time.

Main representatives of the compilers were Oribasius of Pergamon, Alexandros of Tralles, Paul of Aegina, and others. The main work of the Oribasius consists of a compilation of Galen's writings and includes 70 books. But Oribasius not only quotes Galen, but also adds other important findings of good doctors. As probably the most important Byzantine collectors medical knowledge, he created numerous revisions, in which older incorrect methods were excreted. Several of his works, along with those of many other Byzantine physicians, were in Latin and eventually translated in the Age of Enlightenment and rationalism into English and French.

Around the year 512 was born in Constantinople Opel with the Vienna Dioscorides, the first fixed datable Bilderherbar of late antiquity. The work was a gift of the citizens of Honoratae ( Pera ) to the Imperial Princess Juliana Anicia. Most of the forms illustrated Dioscorides - Herbaruim. It is based on standard work Dioscorides De Materia Medica from the 1st century AD The herbarium was until the beginning of the modern era in use, the display inscriptions in Arabic, Latin and Hebrew writing.

Paul of Aegina described in the 6th book of Pragmateia (Handbook of practical medicine ) gynecological operations with the speculum. Written end of the 7th century was this work for 800 years as the official textbook.

An event that marked the end of the first phase of Byzantine Medicine sustainable, the Justinian plague was ( 541-542 AD).

Second phase of Byzantine medicine (642-1453 AD)

The second phase of Byzantine medicine ranges from 642 to the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in the year in 1453.

Also during this period, scientists such as Michael Psellos and Nikolaos Myrepsos busy with the compilation of ancient knowledge, however, so that now began to include clinical experience with the compilation.

In late antiquity, many sources mention hospitals, their specific story ranges in the military direction back into the Roman Empire and beyond. Konstantin Opel formed in the Middle Ages the center of these activities due to its geographical position, size and accumulated knowledge.

A Byzantine treatise of the 13th century of Nikolaos Myrepsos reached in the Paris Medical Faculty of the status as a pharmaceutical guiding text to 1651st The Byzantine treatise of Demetrius Pepagomenos (13th century) about gout should the humanist Marcus Musurus translated into Latin and published in 1517 in Venice. Ideas, Byzantium was only " transmission belt " of ancient medical knowledge to the renaissance have proven to be outdated. Today, it is known that the Latin Dr. Roger of Salerno was influenced in the late 12th century through the treatises of the Byzantine doctors Aetius, Alexander of Tralles and Paul of Aegina.

Furthermore, there was an opening of science against the healing knowledge of other countries and peoples, such as Persia, Arabia and India.

Hospitals

A major contribution of Byzantine medicine was the establishment of medical facilities - supported by the churches and the state, in many respects corresponded to the modern hospitals. Similar institutions of ancient Greece and Rome usually served as a hospital or hospice. Medical devices of this type were located in cities such as Constantinople and later Opel Thessaloniki.

The first hospital was an institution of Basil of Caesarea end of the 4th century, these institutions only occurred during the 8th and 9th century in the urban areas in general appearance. The Byzantine medicine was practiced mainly in catches, respectively ambulatory in specific parts of a hospital complex, where an almost byzantine hierarchy developed, including the medical superintendent ( archiatroi ), head nurses ( hypourgoi ) and nurses ( hyperetai ) prevailed.

Christianity

Christianity played in most areas of the empire a key role in the construction and maintenance of hospitals. Bishops erected and talked in their dioceses numerous hospitals. Hospitals were often built near churches because great emphasis was placed on the idea of ​​healing through salvation. The application of the medical art was connected with the prayer that you taught at certain saints like Cosmas and Damian, which killed 303 of Diocletian, and patron of medicine and doctors were.

Transition from the Byzantine to Persian- Arabic medicine healing knowledge

The passing of the ancient knowledge of the disease, the diagnostic and treatment options and medications in the first Persian- Arab cultural and linguistic area took place mostly in the border regions of the great Byzantine empire.

Often, the knowledge transfer was associated with conquests of larger cities. Other reasons for the clash of cultures was the emigration of Christian Nestorians, who relocated due to internal political and theological disagreements to Persia.

The symbiosis of the Byzantine and Persian- Arabic medicine, several currents that led to the establishment of medical training centers among other things developed.