MediManus
MediManus is a collection of digital reproductions of manuscripts that promotes studying and rethinking ancient Greek medicine in the 21st century. Beyond a library, it is a multicomponent repository of original analytical information with a particular focus on the works contained in the manuscripts. It is not a single collection, but a cluster of connected research programs that explore the Greek medical heritage, from the manuscripts themselves to their texts, especially those on pharmacotherapeutics.
Although traditionally credited with a foundational role in the development of medicine through the centuries, Greek medicine is not well known. Classical scholarship has traditionally focused on the works of such great physicians as Hippocrates, Galen or Dioscorides, and neglected the so-called others as well as later production. The recent Census of Greek Medical Manuscripts has made it plain that the manuscripts that transmitted the whole body of ancient Greek medical literature are twice as numerous as previously thought: around 2,500 instead of around 1,300. The number of works by ancient Greek physicians also increased substantially. MediManus lists all manuscripts and will gradually provide access to the digital reproduction of all of them -as they become available from the libraries-, in addition to precisely identifying the works of all kinds they contain, by named and known physicians as well as by the anonymous ones who probably were scholars and practitioners caring for populations’ health.
MediManus is an e-publication of the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University made possible thanks to the collaboration of a dedicated interdisciplinary team and the libraries that own the manuscripts.
At the core of MediManus there is the collection of digital reproductions of Greek medical manuscripts. Items can be accessed in different ways explained in the ReadMe, from quick to free text search and also by browsing the Table of Contents under Medical Manuscripts on the Homepage. The MediManus collection comprises items that can be immediately identified through catalogues of manuscripts, as well as other items not immediately recognizable or properly distinguished such as palimpsests, edited and restored manuscripts, or composite volumes. Independently of the way they have been retrieved, all manuscripts are first displayed in a summary way comprising exact identification as per catalographic standard practice, a short presentation that stresses any relevant characteristic, from content to history, and the first image of its digital reproduction. From there, a simple yet accurate description can be accessed, which contains the list of the works in the manuscripts. Filters allow to expand the results of the search by bringing other manuscripts with works by the same author, other copies of the same work, or also other works on the same topic. And also other manuscripts of the same library or even in the country of the library (see ReadMe). Manuscripts are all unique pieces. Some of them have been elegantly produced as deluxe objects for display purposes, others are small notebooks hastily written by practitioners—and sometimes in a sloppy calligraphy—, and still others are manuals with botanical tables for exact knowledge and correct identification of plants. Not all have been carefully investigated and many of them still require proper study. Examining manuscripts “through a magnifier” and closely scrutinizing their making, texts and history brings to light a great many information, as well as splendid or rare illustrations, all of which escaped in previous research. All this information has been compiled from direct examination of the manuscripts in libraries across the world—in prestigious national institutions, monasteries all over Greece and sometimes in difficult expeditions through the years— and has been accurately stored for communication to the scholarly and scientific community. This precious unedited material will be accessible in the section From our Notebooks where it will be presented for display, scientific information, and communication of mystery-solving research. Plants are prominently present in the Greek medical heritage as the most important source of material for both alimentary consumption and medicinal treatment. They have been studied in treatises that laid down the foundations of botany until the Linnean revolution in the 18th century and its system of plant designation. Both these Greek botanical treatises and the table that accompany works devoted to the use of natural substances—which are not limited to plants but also deal with animals and minerals—are collected under the section with the meaningful name PhytEikon. The icons announced by this label, which are designated as Icones Plantarum in classical botanical literature, are not icons strictly speaking; they are representations of plants considered as functional components in ancient and present botanical science that translate into visual terms the defining characteristics of plant species described in the text they accompany. They are considered here as botanical tables. In PhytEikon, the Greek works that laid down the basis of botany for centuries are collected and made accessible in a digital, searchable format, as well as the botanical tables in the manuscripts. PharmAntica, also, is a digital library. Over time it will assemble all the works on pharmacotherapeutics by Greek physicians from Hippocrates’ time to the 15th century. This corpus of texts in digital, searchable format will gradually reconstruct the entirety of the available resources, like a virtual Library of Alexandria where polymath scholars and scientists were studying texts and producing original scientific research. This comprehensive corpus of texts and their possible variations in the manuscripts in MediManus will provide the primary material for renewed interdisciplinary research on the therapeutic uses of natural substances in our iMouseion virtual research environment. Data collected from manuscripts as well as results from research will be published under the section Notes and monographs on plants or other natural resources. Such peer-reviewed short scholarly notes or more extended publications as monographs will further contribute to illustrate the relevance of ancient Greek medicine in the 21st century.