A Cretan Healer's Handbook in the Byzantine Tradition by Ann Clark Patricia

Author:Ann Clark, Patricia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2011-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Preface to the Appendix

Organizational Features

This substantial Appendix presents the materia medica of the Theodorakis text in a way that is intended to give a compressed glimpse of the vital roles these substances have played over centuries of traditional medicine. The names of the animal, mineral and vegetable resources which form the bulk of the healing lore in this manuscript are listed alphabetically by Greek term. As discussed in detail earlier (Chapter Four, Orthography and nomenclature, pp. 42–3), spelling, accentuation and grammatical forms in this text, as in most iatrosophia, vary widely and wildly. I decided that such muddy vocabulary would be most accessible and most useful if the words were presented exactly as they are encountered in the manuscript. With few exceptions (and these for the sake of clarity), I list the Greek term – often in all its erroneous glory – as it is met for the first time in the text. This initial term is then followed by its other, variant forms.

Part Three of the Appendix, plants and plant products, is organized slightly differently from the first two parts, the animal and mineral sections. Where it can be done with a reasonable degree of accuracy, comparable cross-references from ancient sources have been included for all categories of materia in the Theodorakis text. But plants and plant products have been given more detailed consideration. Not only do plants and their products constitute the vast majority of the book’s materia, they also provide the richest source material for tracing historical continuity and change. To this end the names of plants and plant products in the Theodorakis text have been compared with plant names listed in a small group of key secondary sources. Out of the enormous bibliography on the history of plant identification and nomenclature in Greece, these sources are particularly helpful for a study of iatrosophia. Over the centuries, as is well recognized, a wide variety of names have been recorded for the same plant and, at different times and in different places, an equally wide variety of plants have been given the same – or similar – names. Collectively, the sources cited in the entries below perform two functions: they underscore the difficulty in securely identifying plants in ancient texts, as well as those used in traditional medicine; and secondly, they demonstrate the resilience of the tradition of medicinal plant use in Greece. Their coverage varies: the Potter (1988) index gives a glimpse of early Hippocratic plant materia medica; Langkavel (1866) lists plant names in Greek manuscript sources from late antiquity; Heldreich (1910), Gennadion (1914) and Kavvadas (1956) supply a rich collection of locally and historically variant names; Frangkaki (1969 and 1978) provides historical accounts of specifically Cretan plant names, as does the Cretan Iatrosophion of Papadogiannakis (2001). The latter two, together with Rigatos (2005), who notes some of the common plants central to the iatrosophic tradition in Greece generally, bring us through the medical traditions of nineteenth and twentieth century rural Greece and to the time of Theodorakis and his practice.

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