YOUTIE, L.C.,
P. Michigan XVII. The Michigan Medical Codex (P.Mich. 758 = P.Mich. inv. 21).
Scholars Press, Atlanta (Georgia), 1996. XXV,87,13p. ills.(B&W photographs). Original red cloth. Spine gilt titled. ‘This collection of medical papyri, with a clipped and clear introduction by Ann Hanson (pp.XV-XXV), represents the finest of both medical history and papyrology: the texts are not ‘edited’, nor (except in rare instances) do they have comments by later readers; they are the stuff of landfills (in this case in Egypt, to about A.D. 600), fragments of tracts probably recopied by a wary scribe fro an ever-impatient physician of midwife who needed the recipes for actual practice. This generally overlooked aspect of classical studies has received some notice, thanks to the presumed Library of Philodemus at Herculaneum. (…) Louise Yountie’s ‘Michigan Papyri XVII’ deserves a place in any medical library that has a pretence to holdings in the history of medicine, for it is essential to anyone working through the puzzles and mysteries of Greco-Roman drug lists. (…) The appearance of similar formulae in multiple papyri suggest several essential characteristics of drug lore and pharmacy among the Greeks and Romans (…). But the papyri presented by Youtie may indicate as well a a ‘filtering up’ of information drawn from long centuries of folk medicine. (…) Youtie’s documents are holographs, original, and the modern medical historian notes that these one-of-a-kind pieces of evidence tell exactly what drugs were employed, (…). They also show that these scraps often neatly match want one finds in the ‘great names’ of ancient medicine: if a Galen was not above copying out thousands of lines from his pharmacological predecessors, one can discern how drug recipes were passed along, sometimes crudely, sometimes with great sophistication.’ (JOHN SCARBOROUGH in Isis, 1997, pp.530-531).
€ 75.00
(Antiquarian)
(97)