Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 10–15

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A parallel Arabic-English edition; edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos.

Medical Aphorisms consists of approximately 1,500 maxims compiled by Maimonides from the treatises of Galen, the ancient Greek physician. Maimonides arranges the aphorisms into twenty-five treatises, organizing them by traditional medieval subspecialties such as gynecology, hygiene, and diet. The central subjects of the treatises presented in this volume include fevers, periods and crises of a disease, and surgery. Because the original texts that Maimonides drew from have not survived, these aphorisms provide tantalizing clues about aspects of Galen’s thought that are otherwise unknown. They thus serve as a window onto the ancient medical theories of Galen as well as on the medieval practice of Maimonides.

About the Author, Editor & Translator

Gerrit Bos

Gerrit Bos is chair of the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. He is proficient in classical and Semitic languages and is widely published in the fields of Jewish studies, Islamic studies, Judeo-Arabic texts, and medieval Islamic science and medicine. In addition to preparing the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, Professor Bos is involved with a series of medical-botanical Arabic-Hebrew-Romance synonym texts written in Hebrew characters, and is producing an edition of Ibn al-Jazzār’s Zād al-musāfir (Viaticum). He is also studying the Hebrew medical terminology used by the major translators of the thirteenth century; a first analysis can be found in his Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the 13th Century (2 vols.). He received the Maurice Amado award for his work on Maimonides’ medical texts and is a Member of Honor of the Argentinean Society for the History of Medicine.