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Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures: Sickness, Health, and Local Epistemologies book cover

1st Edition

Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures Sickness, Health, and Local Epistemologies

Edited By Ulrike Steinert Copyright 2020
338 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

338 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical disease concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness from antiquity to the seventeenth century. Focusing on the systematisation and classification of illness in its multiple forms, manifestations and causes, this volume examines case... Read more

List of figures

List of tables

List of contributors

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction: sickness, cultural classifications and local epistemologies

ULRIKE STEINERT (IN CONSULTATION WITH ELISABETH HSU)

PART I Disease concepts and healing: new approaches to knowledge and practice in premodern medical texts and traditions

1 Distinctive issues in the history of medicine in antiquity

GEOFFREY E. R. LLOYD

2 How to read a recipe? Working backwards from the prescription to the complaint

ELISABETH HSU

3 Experiencing the dead in ancient Egyptian healing texts

RUNE NYORD

PART II Disease classifications in premodern medical texts and traditions from the Near East, Mediterranean and East Asia

4 Types of diagnoses in Papyrus Ebers and Smith

SUSANNE RADESTOCK

5 Ancient Egyptian prescriptions for the back and abdomen and their Mesopotamian and Mediterranean counterparts

JULIANE UNGER

6 Disease concepts and classifications in ancient Mesopotamian medicine

ULRIKE STEINERT

7 Classification of illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus

ELIZABETH CRAIK

8 The delicacy of the rabbinic asthenes: sickness, weakness or self-indulgence?

AARON AMIT

9 The Paradise of Wisdom: streams of tradition in the first medical encyclopaedia in Arabic

LUCIA RAGGETTI

10 The Tree of Nosology in Tibetan medicine

KATHARINA SABERNIG

PART III Mental illness in ancient medical systems

11 Disturbing disorders: reconsidering the problem of ‘mental diseases’ in ancient Mesopotamia

M. ERICA COUTO-FERREIRA

12 Classification, explanation and experience: mental disorder in Graeco-Roman antiquity

PETER N. SINGER

Appendix 1: the ‘Five Twig Powder’ and four of its variants

Appendix 2: composition of the polypharmacies

Index

Biography

Ulrike Steinert is a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Training Group 1876 ‘Early Concepts of Humans and Nature’ at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. Her research and publications focus on the history of Mesopotamian medicine and culture, the Akkadian language, women’s health, gender and body concepts. She is the author of a study on the body, self and identity in Mesopotamian texts, entitled Aspekte des Menschseins im Alten Mesopotamien. Eine Studie zu Person und Identität im 2. und 1. Jt. v. Chr. (2012) and is currently preparing a monograph on Women’s Health Care in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Textual Sources.

"One clear hope for this volume is that by bringing together scholars from medical anthropology, the history of medicine, and the philosophy of medicine, even if the cross-disciplinary dialogue is just beginning, the questions opened up by the book as a whole will give us increasing opportunities to expand the conversation in ways that will make this material and these concerns more coherent going forward. Steinert and the authors of these individual chapters are to be heartily applauded for the effort." - Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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