In The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides Gerrit Bos offers new English translations of three major and six minor medical treatises by Maimonides (1138–1204), based on the original Arabic texts and collected in one volume for the first time.

The original Arabic text of Maimonides’ major medical work, Medical Aphorisms, was critically edited and translated into English by Gerrit Bos in the years 2004-2017, and published in earlier volumes of the book series The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides. The present work is a new critical edition of the medieval Hebrew translation by Nathan ha-Meʾati, who was active as a translator of scientific texts in Rome in the late thirteenth century, where his colleague Zeraḥyah Ḥen had completed a translation of the same Maimonidean text in 1277, only a few years earlier. Nathan aimed to provide the general reader with a translation that was easier to understand than Zeraḥyah's translation. The present critical edition of Nathan’s translation is primarily based on MS Paris, BN, héb. 1174, and not on MS Paris, BN, héb. 1173, used by Suessmann Muntner for his edition in 1959, as this copy suffers from many mistakes and corruptions.

As an important addition to the critical editions of the original Arabic text and medieval Hebrew translations of Maimonides’ Medical Aphorisms, Gerrit Bos offers an Arabic-Hebrew-English glossary of 5,600 technical terms and materia medica along with Hebrew indexes.

Maimonides, one of the most celebrated rabbis in the history of Judaism, was a prolific author of influential Arabic philosophical and medical treatises as well as two of the most important works on Jewish law. Medical Aphorisms is the best-known and most comprehensive of his medical works, and Gerrit Bos offers here a masterful English translation with detailed annotations. Medical Aphorisms consists of approximately 1,500 maxims compiled by Maimonides from the treatises of Galen, the renowned ancient Greek physician. Maimonides arranges the aphorisms into twenty-five treatises, organizing them by traditional medieval subspecialties such as gynecology, hygiene, and diet. He also includes a section examining unusual cases from Galen and offers a critical analysis of Galen's theories. The second of six volumes, Medical Aphorisms: Treatises 6-9 provides tantalizing insights into the work of Galen and the world of medieval medicine. It will be a rich and valuable resource for students and scholars working in the history of medicine, Jewish studies, and medieval Arabic culture.

Maimonides’ On the Regimen of Health was composed at an unknown date at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn Alī, Saladin’s eldest son who complained of constipation, indigestion, and depression. The treatise must have enjoyed great popularity in Jewish circles, as it was translated three times into Hebrew as far as we know; by Moses ben Samuel ibn Tibbon in the year 1244, by an anonymous translator, and by Zeraḥyah ben Isaac ben She’altiel Ḥen who was active as a translator in Rome between 1277 and 1291. The present edition by Gerrit Bos contains the original Arabic text, the medieval Hebrew translations and the Latin translations, the latter edited by Michael McVaugh.