Maimonides: Medical Aphorisms Treatises 6-9

Abstract

Recently there has been a surge of new interest in classical studies in the influence of medical ideas (cf., e.g., P. J. van der Eijk, Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, and M. J. Schiefsky, Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005). van der Eijk and Schiefsky argue convincingly that insights developed by physicians and medical writers in antiquity proved fruitful for philosophers in general, and particularly for the philosophy of nature. Indeed, the great physician of antiquity, Galen of Pergamum, wrote in an eponymous treatise that “the best physician is also a philosopher” (Quod optimus medicus fit quoque philosophus, vol. 1.53–63 in Kühn's edition: Claudii Galeni opera omnia, 20 vols., 1821–33). Happily there is parallel interest in the medical works of medieval thinkers and philosophers, as evidenced by the fine volume of Gerrit Bos under review. Bos presents us with a new edition, in English with a facing Arabic text, complete with critical apparatus, of Moses Maimonides' Medical Aphorisms Treatises 6–9. This work is the second in a series that began with Bos' earlier volume covering treatises 1–5 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), and will eventually stretch into three more volumes that will contain all twenty-five treatises on the Medical Aphorisms (xv). There does exist a previous English translation of Maimonides' Medical Aphorisms by Fred Rosner (The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides. Maimonides' Medical Writings, 3. Haifa: Maimonides Research Institute, 1989.), but Bos' edition makes needed correction to earlier faulty manuscript readings.