Moses Maimonides. Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 16–21: A Parallel Arabic-English Edition. Edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos. (Medical Works of Moses Maimonides.) xxix + 204 pp., bibl., indexes. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2015. $89.95 (cloth).

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Previous articleNext article FreeMoses Maimonides. Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 16–21: A Parallel Arabic-English Edition. Edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos. (Medical Works of Moses Maimonides.) xxix + 204 pp., bibl., indexes. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2015. $89.95 (cloth).Oliver LeamanOliver Leaman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreMedical Aphorisms, Treatises 16–21, a volume in the series of the medical works of Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), edited by Gerrit Bos, constitutes an impressive project. The prospect of eventually having all of these medical works available to us is very welcome. The publisher is to be commended for taking it on, and all the volumes are nicely done. It is very helpful to have parallel texts, and anyone interested in the history of medicine—or of course in the thought of Maimonides—will benefit from access to the whole series.These aphorisms are generally taken from Galen, but not all of them are; and some are based on other ancient thinkers, often with references to texts that are no longer extant. Maimonides also brings in some medical thinkers who are nearer to him in time and place, and there is a long list of medicines and drugs, plants and preparations, as they have occurred in medical history and were available to him. He is happy to provide his own comments, based on his experience, as to the efficacy of a variety of treatments. Clearly physicians at the time had a wealth of material to consult, and of course they could also, as Maimonides often does, reflect on their own experience.Bos has worked with a number of manuscripts and provides an account of them, and his presentation and the translation of the text are judicious. He provides detailed and useful notes and a lively introduction to this set of treatises. A list of botanicals for the whole series of aphorisms is included here, and that is in itself a valuable contribution to our understanding of medicine at the time.What will be of wider interest to those who work on Maimonides is his approach. Clearly he had immense self-confidence in dealing with the medical literature of the time, praising and criticizing as he goes and—most importantly, to my mind—constantly abbreviating. This is a very familiar stylistic feature of his general work: presenting what he takes the conclusions to be without necessarily spending much time on how he got there. Of course, these are aphorisms, and so we would not expect them to be long, yet Maimonides often thoroughly reduces the original text to what he takes to be the bare bones, the essence of the truth as he sees it, and expects the reader to be happy with that. This is very much true of his style with legal and philosophical material as well, and it comes to the fore here.One wonders who the anticipated audience for this sort of literature was. The ordinary educated public, medical practitioners, those interested in comparing ancient and modern ideas on health? This is not only a question for medical aphorisms. Throughout the culture of Arabic literature there is a wide variety of different types of writing, some very technical and specialized and others more accessible to a wider public. We are all interested in simple generalizations about health, and when they incorporate the views of practitioners both contemporary and classical they become even more interesting. A useful piece of information I picked up was the advice to rub crocodile fat on a crocodile bite. Gerrit Bos is to be congratulated on yet another fine volume in this major project in the history of medicine. Notes Oliver Leaman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky. He writes on Jewish, Islamic, and Asian philosophy, and his latest book is The Qur’an: A Philosophical Guide (Bloomsbury, 2016). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 108, Number 1March 2017 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690792 © 2017 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.