On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art

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On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art was lost to scholars for centuries before it was discovered in the Biblioteca Nacional de España by the great bio-bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider, who initially thought it was simply another copy of On Asthma. The publication of this new translation marks the first time the Arabic manuscript and Gerrit Bos’s English version have been available to a modern audience in any form. It is in Maimonides’s favored aphoristic format and contains some unique advice on serious abdominal wounds, which is most likely a reflection on Maimonides’s own experience with battlefield casualties.

The book includes a useful Supplement section which traces connections between On Rules and other Maimonides works, a Glossary of technical terms, Notes to the English translation, bibliographies and a full Subject Index.

About the Author

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.