Innovation in Byzantine Medicine

Petros Bouras-Vallianatos studied both pharmacy and ancient and Byzantine history before obtaining his PhD in the history of medicine in 2015 from King's College London. After holding a Wellcome Research Fellowship at the University of London, he was appointed to a permanent post in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. He has published widely on Byzantine medicine and pharmacology, cross-cultural medical exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, the reception of the classical medical tradition in the Middle Ages, and Greek palaeography, including the first descriptive catalogue of the Greek manuscripts at the Wellcome Library in London. He has recently co-edited Greek Medical Literature and its Readers: From Hippocrates to Islam and Byzantium (with Sophia Xenophontos; Routledge, 2018) and Brill's Companion to the Reception of Galen (with Barbara Zipser; Brill, 2019).

• FrontmatterList of FiguresList of TablesNote to the Reader1: Introduction2: On Urines: Byzantine Uroscopy between Tradition and Innovation3: On Urines: The Physician and his Patients4: Medical Epitome: A Handbook for Philiatroi ('Amateur Physicians')5: Medical Epitome: Assembling Pharmacological Knowledge in Late Byzantium6: On Psychic Pneuma: John's Advice on How to Lead a Healthy Life7: ConclusionAppendices1. Glossary of Medical Terms2. Accounts of Urine Colour in Theophilos' On Urines and John's On Urines3. John's Diagram of the Urine Vial in his On Urines4. Treatment of Eye Affections and Scirrhus in John's Medical Epitome, Book Four5. The Manuscripts of the Medical Epitome6. Chapter Titles of Johns Medical Epitome, Books Three and Four, and List of Recipes of Books Five and SixEndmatterBibliographyIndex Rerum et NominumIndex LocorumIndex Codicum Manu Scriptorum

Based on the surviving oeuvre of the aktouarios ('high-ranking physician') John Zacharias, Petros Bouras-Vallianatos describes in great detail and with profound knowledge the unique status and originality of Byzantine medicine in relation to, and in exchange with, other medieval medical cultures, pointing to the structures of their mutual influences as well as their dependence on social and cultural factors and developments...Bouras-Vallianatos offers an excellent contribution to the understanding of Byzantine medical culture. In sum, Innovation in Byzantine Medicine offers [...] plentiful inspiration for further research in the field of Byzantine medicine.