Articella

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The Articella is a collection of medical treatises bounded together in one volume that was used mainly as textbook and reference manual between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. In medieval times, several versions of this anthology circulated in manuscript form among medical students. Between 1476 and 1534, printed editions of the Articella were also published in several European cities.

The collection grew around a synthetic exposition of classical Greek medicine written in Baghdad by physician and polyglot Hunayn bin Ishaq, better known in the West as Ioannitii. His synthesis was in turn based on Galen’s Ars Medica or Techne iatrike and thus became known in Europe as Isagoge Ioannitii ad Tegni Galieni, or Hunayn’s Introduction to the Art of Galen.

In the mid-thirteenth century, the emergence of formal medical education in several European universities fueled a demand for comprehensive textbooks. Instructors from the influential Schola Medica Salernitana popularized the practice of binding other treatises together with their manuscript copies of the Isagogue. These included Hippocrates’ Prognostics as well as his Aphorisms, Theophilus’ De Urinis, Philaterus’ De Pulsibus and many other classic works.

[edit] See also

Medieval medicine

[edit] References:

Cornelius O'Boyle. Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Copies of the "Ars Medicine": A Checklist and Contents Descriptions of the Manuscripts. Articella Studies: Texts and Interpretations in Medieval and Renaissance Medical Teaching, no. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, and CSIC Barcelona, Department of History of Science, 1998.

Jon Arrizabalaga. The "Articella" in the Early Press, c. 1476-1534. Articella Studies: Texts and Interpretations in Medieval and Renaissance Medical Teaching, no. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, and CSIC Barcelona, Department of History of Science, 1998.

Papers of the Articella Project Meeting, Cambridge, December 1995. Articella Studies: Texts and Interpretations in Medieval and Renaissance Medical Teaching, no. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, and CSIC Barcelona, Department of History of Science, 1998.