BYZANTINE MEDICINE

The era of medicine after the decline of Greek medicine and the Roman Empire came to be known as the era of Byzantine Medicine. Byzantine doctors derived their knowledge from Greek Medicine and also from the Roman sources. Practiced in the Byzantine Empire from about 400 AD to 1453 AD, medicine was one of the sciences in which the Byzantines improved on their Greco-Roman predecessors. As a result, Byzantine Medicine had a significant influence on Islamic medicine and the Western rebirth of Medicine during the Renaissance. Byzantine physicians often compiled and standardized medical knowledge from the Ancient Greek and Roman knowledge into textbooks. These books tended to be elaborately decorated with many fine illustrations, highlighting the particular ailment. The Medical Compendium in Seven Books, written by the leading physician Paul of Aegina, is of particular importance. The compendium was written in the late seventh century and remained in use as a standard textbook for 800 years. For many years in the Byzantine Empire, this work contained the sum of all Western medical knowledge and was unrivalled in its accuracy and completeness. Late antiquity witnessed a revolution in the medical scene and many sources mention hospitals in passing. Constantinople doubtless was the center of such activities in the Middle Ages, owing to its geographical position, wealth and accumulated knowledge. Christianity always played a key role in the building and maintaining of Hospitals, as it did with most other areas of the Empire. Many hospitals were built and maintained by Bishops in their respective prefectures. Hospitals were nearly always built near or around Churches and great importance was laid on the idea of healing through salvation - When medicine failed doctors would always ask their patients to pray, after the Iconoclastic problems had been resolved, this usually involved symbols of saints such as Saints Cosmas and Damien, who were patron saints of medicine and doctors. Christianity also played a key role in propagating the idea of charity, medicine was made, according to Gary Ferngren, accessible to all and simple. This idea, combined with the vast resources Byzantine physicians had at their disposal, was one of the first times in history that a state has actively sought to expend resources on a public healthcare system. There have always been people who seek healing, even bodily healing, from the priest, as well as the physician. People often look to religion for a cure. In the early centuries of our own era, the old gods paled and new ones replaced them. Was Asclepius the true healer, the saviour, or was Jesus Christ? The Christian world decided in favour of Jesus. The old gods died. The first Byzantine Physician was the author of the Vienna Dioscurides manuscript, created for the daughter of Emperor Olybrius around 515. Dioscurides was a physician who resided in Rome during the first century. He composed a compendium of all the materia medica then known from Greek medicine and other sources. He may have learned his medicine by practical experience while in the legions. Like most Byzantine physicians, he drew his material from ancient authorities such as Galen and Hippocrates. His work describes some 600 plants and their possible medical use.

Oribasius, perhaps the greatest Byzantine compiler of medical knowledge, frequently made revisions noting where older methods had been incorrect. Several of his works, along with many other Byzantine physicians, were translated into Latin, and eventually, during the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, into English and French. The last great Byzantine Physician was Actuarius, who lived in the early 14th Century in Constantinople. His works on urine laid much of the foundation for later study in that field. However, from the latter 12th Century to the end in 1453, there is very little outpouring in medical knowledge, largely due to the turmoil the Empire was facing on both fronts, following its resurrection after the Latin Empire and the dwindling population of Constantinople due to plague and war. Nevertheless, Byzantine medicine is extremely important both in terms of new discoveries made in that turmoil period, the careful protecting of Ancient Greek and Roman knowledge through compendiums as well as the revision of it and finally, the effect it had in transferring knowledge to both Renaissance Italy and Arabia. An important contribution of Byzantium is arguably the fact that it was the first Empire in which dedicated medical establishments - usually set up by individual Churches or the State, which parallel modern Hospitals in many way, flourished. Although similar establishments existed in Ancient Greece and Rome, they differed in that they were usually either institutions for Military use, or places were citizens went to die in a more peaceful way. Literary sources occasionally mention hospitals, but only documents from Egypt reveal how widespread they were at this time. These Egyptian testimonials record a multitude of hospitals founded by private individuals and independent of ecclesiastical institutions. The origin of the hospital as an independent institution for the care and treatment of the sick can be dated to the third quarter of the fourth century CE. The hospital resolved major tensions in the medical, ecclesiastical, and religious scenes of late antiquity. Medical Institutions of this sort were common in Imperial Cities such as Constantinople. The first hospital was built by Basil of Caesarea in the late fourth century, and although these Institutions flourished, it was only throughout the 8th and 9th Centuries that they began to appear in Provincial Towns as well as Cities, (although Justinian's subsidization of private physicians to work publicly for six months of the year can be seen as the real breakthrough point). Byzantine Medicine was entirely based around Hospitals or walk-in dispensaries which formed part of the Hospital complex, there was a dedicated hierarchy including the Chief Physician (archiatroi), professional nurses (hypourgoi) and the orderlies (hyperetai). Doctors themselves were well trained and most likely attended the University of Constantinople as Medicine had become a true scholarly subject by the period of Byzantium. This rigidity through professionalism bears many hallmarks of today's modern Hospitals, and comparisons are nearly always made by modern Scholars studying this particular field. Unlike philosophy and medicine, which worked in harmony, the tension between medicine and religious belief often stifled or impeded physiological research. Throughout antiquity, rational medicine and faith healing existed side by side, never fully divorcing

themselves from one another. Roman medicine, especially, was an eclectic blend of rational Hellenistic medicine, folk remedies, and religious cult practice. Like so many other aspects of antiquity, medicine was truly interdisciplinary, influencing and in turn being influenced by art, literature, philosophy, politics, and in no small way, religion.