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Hippocratic Recipes; Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth- Century Greece

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Hippocratic Recipes; Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth- Century Greece Hippocratic Recipes; Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth- Century Greece Laurence Marie Victoria Totelin University College London Doctor of Philosophy 1 UMI Number: U592442 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592442 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis examines the earliest extended collections of recipes preserved in Greek, the recipes of the so-called Hippocratic Corpus (late fifth or early fo^rrA century BC). I study the ways and formats in which pharmacological knowledge was transmitted in classical Greece. The compilers of the Hippocratic collections of recipes drew on a variety of sources, written and oral, including small catalogues of recipes comparable to those found on papyri from Hellenistic Egypt. Much pharmacological knowledge may have been transmitted orally from generation to generation before assuming written form in medical treatises. But following the social anthropologist Jack Goody, I distinguish between the medical knowledge the recipes reflect and the written form in which they have been transmitted. I also assess the socio-economic context in which the recipes were produced and used. Some Hippocratic recipes fall into a tradition of home remedies, but many other recipes include exotic and luxury ingredients affordable only to the rich. These luxury ingredients transformed traditional medicine into 4Haute Medecine\ The compilers of Hippocratic collections of recipes were biased in their choices of ingredients, and this bias was in line with the orientalizing tendencies discernible in ancient Greek culture. The intended readers of the catalogues of recipes were not pharmacological novices. Knowledge of the ingredients is a prerequisite to the reading of these recipes, quantities are often left to the discretion of the reader, and utensils involved in the preparation of the remedies are rarely mentioned. Finally, I examine the significance of the name ‘Hippocrates’ for the transmission of the ‘Hippocratic’ recipes in later antiquity. As ‘Hippocratic’, they were glossed and quoted in the works of later medical authors. However, their success was not always linked to the name ‘Hippocrates’; late antique Latin translations of the gynaecological recipes were transmitted anonymously. 2 Table of contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. 2 Table of contents ................................................................................................... 3 List of maps ........................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. 7 List of abbreviations ............................................................................................ 8 Note on plant identifications ............................................................................... 11 Introduction: Under the spell of the 12 pharmakon ................................................ 1. Sources and method ......................................................................................... 18 1.1. Sources ......................................................................................... 18 1.1.1. General introduction to the Hippocratic Corpus 18 1.1.2. The gynaecological treatises ............................... 22 1.1.3. The nosological treatises ..................................... 25 1.1.4. Fistulas , Haemorrhoids and Ulcers................... 26 1.1.5. Other treatises including recipes ........................ 27 1.1. Parallel redactions and Cos and Cnidus .................................. 27 1.2. Social history of medicine: Medicine as practice ................... 31 1.3. Orality and literacy .................................................................... 32 2. Oral transmission of medical knowledge and written recipes .................... 41 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................ 41 2.2. The compendiast/stemmatic model and its criticism .............. 43 2.3. Orality and the Hippocratic catalogues of recipes .................. 54 2.4. Linguistic approaches to recipes and catalogues of recipes 62 2.4.1. Recipes as text-types .......................................... 62 a) Heading: Purposes of the recipes and types of medications .................................. 65 b) Requisite ingredients and utensils 67 c) Rules of procedure ................................. 70 d) Application and administration 74 e) Conclusion .............................................. 76 3 2.5. Catalogues of recipes as collections of fragments and as 77 discourse colonies .............................................................................. Appendix one: The cantharides recipes ........................................... 80 Appendix two: Types of medications and application/administration verbs ...................................................... 82 3. The history of the written catalogues of recipes ........................................... 84 3.1. Introduction ................................................................................. 84 3.2. The composition of the Hippocratic gynaecological collections of recipes .......................................................................... 84 3.2.1. Identification of small collections of recipes within the Hippocratic gynaecological treatises 84 3.2.2. The small collections are integrated into treatises............................................................................ 94 3.3. The beginnings of the tradition of small collections of recipes ................................................................................................. 99 3.4. The disappearance of the Pharmakitis ..................................... 104 3.5. Conclusion: The ‘Hippocratic’ recipes are attributed to Hippocrates ......................................................................................... 110 Appendix: Translations ..................................................................... 114 4. Hippocratic recipes between home remedies and Haute Medecine 119 4.1. Introduction ................................................................................ 119 4.2. Gender studies and the Hippocratic gynaecological recipes.. 120 4.3. The sources of the compilers of gynaecological recipes 125 4.4. The High and the Low ............................................................... 138 4.5. Are the gynaecological recipes an exception? - Dietetics and pharmacology in the Hippocratic treatises ............................... 145 4.6. Conclusions ................................................................................ 152 Appendix: Translations ...................................................................... 154 5. Imports, geographical determinism and influences: The use of exotic and luxury ingredients in the Hippocratic catalogues of recipes ........................ 156 5.1. Introduction .................................................................................. 156 5.2. A note on naming materia medica in ancient Greece ............. 159 4 5.3. Exotic ingredients ....................................................................... 160 5.3.1. The East ............................................................... 160 5.3.2. The South .............................................................. 168 5.3.3. The North .............................................................. 178 5.3.4 The West ................................................................ 180 5.4. Greek ingredients accompanied by a geographical epithet.... 183 5.5. Final discussion on exotic and luxury ingredients .................. 190 5.6. The question of influences ......................................................... 198 5.6.1. Egyptian influences? ............................................ 199 5.6.2 The question of rationality and Mesopotamian medicine ........................................................................... 205 Table One: The exotic ingredients of the Hippocratic Corpus that are not accompanied by geographical epithets 210 Table Two: The exotic ingredients of the Hippocratic Corpus that are accompanied by geographical epithets 211 Table Three: Greek products accompanied by geographical epithets in the Hippocratic Corpus 213 6. Reading, studying and using the Hippocratic recipes .................................. 215 6.1. Introduction ................................................................................. 215 6.2. The material presentation of recipe collections in antiquity and the Middle Ages .......................................................................... 216 6.3. The audience of the Hippocratic recipes .................................. 222 6.3.1. Utensils used in the preparation
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