Soranus (Greek physician)

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Soranus, Greek physician, born at Ephesus, lived during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian (AD 98-138). According to the Suda, he practised in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome. He was the chief representative of the school of physicians known as "Methodists." His treatise Gynaecology is extant (first published in 1838, later by V. Rose, in 1882, with a 6th-century Latin translation by Moschio, a physician of the same school). Also extant are parts of treatises On Signs of Fractures and On Bandages. Of his most important work (On Acute and Chronic Diseases) only a few fragments in Greek remain, but we possess a complete Latin translation by Caelius Aurelianus (5th century). The Life of Hippocrates probably formed one of the collection of medical biographies by Soranus referred to in the Suda, and is valuable as the only authority for the life of the great physician, with the exception of articles in the Suda and in Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Κώς). The Introduction to the Science of Medicine (V. Rose, Anecdota graeca, ii. 1870) is considered spurious.

[edit] Reference

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] Bibliography

• Greek text
  • Johannes Ilberg, Sorani Gynaeciorum libri IV, De signis fracturarum, De fasciis, Vita Hippocratis secundum Soranum, Corpus medicorum Graecorum 4, Berlin, 1927.
  • Paul Burguière, Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas, Maladies des femmes (with French translation), Collection Budé, 1988-.
• English translation
  • Owsei Temkin et al., Soranus' Gynaecology, Johns Hopkins Press, 1956.