VIENNA DIOSCURIDES Dioscurides was a physician who resided in Rome during the first century. He composed a compendium of all the materia medica then known from Greek medicine and other sources. He may have learned his medicine by practical experience while in the legions and he most certainly relied on an earlier work by the physician Crateuas. His work describes some 600 plants and their possible medical use. Byzantine science was essentially Classical science. The value of a book like the Vienna Dioscurides was determined by the veracity of its illustrations. Eventually, copies became so bad that a movement was initiated to “clean up” the texts. Periodically, there were “renaissances”. In the 6th century CE, when this book was made, there was such a renaissance. It represents an attempt to rescue an ancient text. Illustrations are dependent upon various updatings. Thus, scientific illustration could only progress as fast as accurate illustrations could be made and consequently, science progressed pari passu with scientific illustration. It was only with mechanized type that this problem of lag-time could be overcome.

Vienna Dioscurides, 512 CE An edition of De Materia Medica by Dioscurides, prepared for Julia Anicia, daughter of Emperor Anicius Olybrius. The manuscript also has Arabic annotations because it came into the hands of an Arabic owner. The herbal features the pictures and names of various plants, and on this page wild blackberry is described and illustrated.

Frontispiece of Vienna Dioscurides, 512 CE “Seven Physicians” The frontispiece of the Vienna Dioscurides shows a set of seven famous pharmacologists. The most prominent man in the picture is Galen, who sits on a folding chair. The other figures are (clockwise from the center) Dioscurides, Nikander, whose treatise on snakebites is part of the Vienna codex, and he is shown here holding out a plant to a serpent, Rufus, the presumed author of the “carmen de herbis”, Andreas, Apollonius Mys and Crateuas. The choice of the seven pharmacologists and their being grouped together is clearly inspired by the concept of the seven wise men as they appear on ancient floor mosaics and in statuary groups, sitting on a semi-circular bench.

THE INTRODUCTION OF HOSPITALS Late antiquity witnessed one revolution in the medical scene: the birth of the hospital. Literary sources occasionally mention hospitals, but only documents from Egypt reveal how widespread they were. These testimonia from Egypt record a multitude of hospitals founded by private individuals and independent of ecclesiastical institutions. The origin of the hospital as an independent institution for the care and treatment of the sick can be dated to the third quarter of the fourth century CE. The hospital resolved major tensions in the medical, ecclesiastical and religious scenes of late antiquity.

RELIGION INTERPOLATED

The Dioscuri, the twins Castor and Pollux, passed out of men’s minds, their places being taken by Cosmas and Damian, martyred under Diocletian, who, themselves physicians and medical missionaries, became the patrons of those who practice the healing art. Ended was the worship of Apollo, who, like his son Asclepius, had of old come to Italy to drive away the plague. Benedict of Nursia had the sun god’s temple on Monte Cassino destroyed an built a monastery in its place. Whose help was now to be sought when pestilence came to Rome? That of Saint Sebastian. For Apollo’s great temple on the Palatine Hill had been destroyed and out of the same stones, on the same spot, had been erected the first church consecrated to Sebastian the martyr, revered as protector against the plague.

Fra Angelico, 1449 “The burial of Saints Cosmas and Damian” Museo di San Marco, Florence The camel in this detail enjoins that the bodies of Saints Cosmas and Damian (which were to be separated on account of a supposed disagreement between the brothers) should be buried side by side. Saints Cosmas and Damian are the patron saints of doctors.

Manuscript from Byzantium, 15th century, in Greek Bologna, University, MS 3632, folio 51 Theophilus Protospatharius, On Urines

This Byzantine manuscript is illustrated with techniques and divisions of uroscopy. Seated at top left is a famous 7th century Greek expert on uroscopy, Theophilus, whose treatise On Urines was much used throughout the Greek East and the Latin West (in translation). Handing Theophilos a urine flask is his assistant, Posos, according to the Greek caption above him. Below the figures are the classifications of urine shown in varying colors. This diagnostic technique was well known in antiquity and Roman physicians elaborated on Greek and Hellenistic methods.