Byzantine medicine is the biggest unknown quantity in both the study of medieval medicine and science and in Byzantine studies. This volume aims to redress this gap by presenting the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of John Zacharias Aktouarios, arguably the most important Late Byzantine physician.

Scholars have made conflicting claims for Byzantine hospitals as medical institutions and as the forebears of the modern hospital. In this study is the first systematic examination of the evidence of the xenôn texts, or Xenonika, on which all such claims must in part rest. These texts, compiled broadly between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, are also transcribed or edited, with the exception of the combined texts of Romanos and Theophilos that, the study proposes, were originally a single manual and teaching work for doctors, probably based on xenôn practice. A schema of their combined chapter headings sets out the unified structure of this text. A short handlist briefly describes the principal manuscripts referred to throughout the study. The introduction briefly examines our evidence for the xenônes from the early centuries of the East Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Chapter 3 examines the texts in xenon medical practice and compares them to some other medical manuals and remedy texts of the Late period and to their structures. The xenôn-ascribed texts are discussed one by one in chapters 4–8; the concluding chapter 9 draw together the common, as well as the divergent, aspects of each text and looks to the comparative evidence for hospital medical practice of the time in the West.

How were Greek texts on the care and medical treatment of the horse transmitted from antiquity to the present day? Using the evidence of Byzantine manuscripts of the veterinary compilation known as the Hippiatrica, Anne McCabe traces the journey of the texts from the stables to the medieval scriptorium and ultimately to the printed edition. Surviving manuscripts include both magnificent presentation copies and plain ones intended for use in the field. TheHippiatrica is a rich and little-known source of information about horses, medicine, and magic. This book provides a guide to its complex history as well as a host of fascinating details, and includes colour illustrations of a number of manuscript pages.

Byzantine medicine remains a little known and misrepresented field not only in the context of debates on medieval medicine, but also among Byzantinists themselves. It is often viewed as 'stagnant' and mainly preserving ancient ideas, and our knowledge of it continues to be based to a great extent on the comments of earlier authorities, which are often repeated uncritically. This volume presents the first comprehensive examination of the medical corpus of, arguably, the most important Late Byzantine physician: John Zacharias Aktouarios (c.1275-c.1330). Its main thesis is that John's medical works show an astonishing degree of openness to knowledge from outside Byzantium combined with a significant degree of originality, in particular, in the fields of uroscopy and human physiology. The analysis of John's edited (On Urines and On Psychic Pneuma) and unedited (Medical Epitome) treatises is supported for the first time by the consultation of a large number of manuscripts, and is also informed by evidence from a wide range of medical sources, including those previously unpublished, and texts from other genres, such as epistolography and merchants' accounts. The contextualization of John's corpus sheds new light on the development of Byzantine medical thought and practice, and enhances our understanding of the Late Byzantine social and intellectual landscape. Through examination of his medical observations in the light of examples from the medieval Latin and Islamic worlds, his theories are also placed within the wider Mediterranean milieu, highlighting the cultural exchange between Byzantium and its neighbours.

In a new introduction to this paperback edition, Miller describes the growing scholarship on this subject in recent years.

Science in Byzantium has rarely been systematically explored. A first of its kind, this collection of essays highlights the disciplines, achievements, and contexts of Byzantine science across the eleven centuries of the Byzantine empire. After an introduction on science in Byzantium and the 21st century, and a study of Christianization and the teaching of science in Byzantium, it offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the scientific disciplines cultivated in Byzantium, from the exact to the natural sciences, medicine, polemology, and the occult sciences. The volume showcases the diversity and vivacity of the varied scientific endeavours in the Byzantine world across its long history, and aims to bring the field into broader conversations within Byzantine studies, medieval studies, and history of science. Contributors are Fabio Acerbi, Anne-Laurence Caudano, Gonzalo Andreotti Cruz, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Herve Inglebert, Stavros Lazaris, Divna Manolova, Maria K. Papathanassiou, Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Thomas Salmon, Ioannis Telelis, Anne Tihon, Alain Touwaide, Arnaud Zucker.