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Darrera modificació: 2017-11-19
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Ventura, Iolanda, "Classification systems and pharmacological theory in medieval collections of materia medica: a short history from the Antiquity to end of the 12th century", dins: Pommerening, Tanja - Bisang, Walter (eds.), Classification fron Antiquity to Modern Times: Sources, Methods, and Theories from an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Berlín - Boston, Walter de Gruyter, 2017, pp. 101-166.
- Resum
- Starting from the two major authorities (auctoritates) of Ancient and Medieval pharmacology, Dioscorides and Galen, my paper provides an overview of the systems of classification of medicamina simplicia derived from plants, animals, metals, and precious stones as recorded in the Latin pharmacological literature from Late Antiquity until the middle of the 12th century, including its intellectual and philosophical background as it determines the rational criteria that regulate the acquisition of knowledge and the systematic ordering and structuring of such medicamina according to their nature, their effect, and their therapeutical properties. In three chronologically structured paragraphs, the paper first examines the two main pharmacological texts written during the Antiquity, viz. Dioscorides' De materia medica and Galen's De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus. From there, it moves on to the main types of pharmacological collections produced in the Late Antiquity, the so-called Antibalomena, Dynamidia, and Quid pro quo lists. The period of transition from Late Antiquity to the first centuries of the Middle Ages was marked by the redaction of some well known herbals that will dominate over the Latin pharmacological literature until at least the end of the 12th century, viz. the spurious Alphabetum Galeni, the Herbarium attributed to the Pseudo-Apuleius, and the medical poem De viribus herbarum written by Odo of Meung, but better known under the title of Macer floridus. The main contribution to the perception and classification of natural elements provided by those works lied in the criteria of structuring and ordering nature according to its relevance and use in medicine. In contrast, the Arabic-Latin pharmacological literature reaching the Western world thanks to Constantine the African‘s translations of al-Majusi's Pantegni and Ibn al-Jazzar's Liber de gradibus provided medieval Latin medicine and pharmacology with a deeper and stronger theoretical background that gave contemporary physicians and medical authors belonging, among others, to the Medical School of Salerno, the chance to reason about the rational criteria and elements of recognition and classification of the nature of medicamina, their qualities, and their effects. The 'theoretical turn' initiated by Constantine's translations and further developed by the authors belonging to, or connected with, the Medical School of Salerno (Bartholomew of Salerno, Platearius, the Magister Salernus, John of Saint-Paul) played therefore a decisive role in the history of rational pharmacology, and will be the object of a long discussion in the third paragraph. My overview ends in the same section with what can be considered the most impressive and influential account of rational pharmacology produced and read during the Middle Ages, viz. the first treatise of the second book of Avicenna's Liber canonis, which represented, with the discussion of its long sections on the acquisition of pharmacological knowledge per experimentum and per ratiocinationem, the most complete, the deepest, and the most problematic and debated pharmacological manual of the Late Middle Ages, whose reception and meaning in Medieval universities was exemplified, among others, by John of Saint-Amand and his pharmacological works.
- Matèries
- Història de la medicina
Medicina - Farmacologia
Fonts
Llatí
- URL
- https://books.google.es/books?id=EwE2DwAAQBAJ&lpg=P ...
https://www.academia.edu/35160845/Classification_Sy ...
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