MedCat

Darrera modificació: 2014-03-11
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat

Riddle, John M., Quid pro quo: Studies in the History of Drugs, Aldershot, Ashgate Variorum (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS367), 1992, 336 pp.

Resum

All too often ancient herbal and other remedies have been dismissed as ‘simply' folklore, of no relevance to medical science. John Riddle's approach, however, has been to explore the history of drugs with the hypothesis that ancient and medieval medicines were effective – a methodology that he expounds in the final essay (hitherto unpublished). Indeed, he shows, both from detailed case-studies and from the comparison of the listings given by classical and medieval authorities with those in modern pharmacopoeias, that our ancestors had discovered and made effective use of many of the drugs used in medicine today, from antiseptics and analgesics to oral contraceptives, even chemotherapy for cancer. There is the suggestion, therefore, that more careful examination and identification of the drugs used in the past may reveal chemicals that can be exploited anew. Central to these studies is the investigation of how a drug was used and how knowledge about it was transmitted – and perhaps also distorted in the process – from the Classical world through the Middle Ages.

Contents:
* I: Pomum ambrae: amber and ambergris in plague remedies
* II: Riddle (1965), "The introduction and use of ..."
* III: Riddle (1970), "Lithotherapy in the Middle Ages ..."
* IV: The Latin alphabetical Dioscorides manuscript group
* V: Amber in ancient pharmacy: the transmission of information about a single drug
* VI: Theory and practice in medieval medicine
* VII: Book reviews, lectures, and marginal notes: three previously unknown 16th-century contributions to pharmacy, medicine and botany – Ioannes Manardus, Franciscus Frigimelica and Melchior Guilandinus
* VIII: Albert on stones and minerals
* IX: Pseudo-Dioscorides Ex herbis femininis and early medieval medical botany
* X: Gargilius Martialis as a medical writer
* XI: The Pseudo-Hippocratic Dynamidia
* XII: Ancient and medieval chemotherapy for cancer
* XIII: Byzantine commentaries on Dioscorides
* XIV: Folk tradition and folk medicine: recognition of drugs in Classical antiquity
* XV: Methodology of historical drug research

Matèries

Medicina - Farmacologia
Història natural - Minerals
Història natural - Vegetals
Medicina - Pesta i altres malalties