THE USE OF MINERALS, PLANTS AND BURNT MATERIALS IN ANCIENT MEDICINE: APPROACHES TO WORKING RECIPES IN JOHN THE PHYSICIAN'S THERAPEUTICS FROM LATE 13TH CENTURY CYPRUS

We have undertaken an innovative multidisciplinary approach towards the identification of pharmaceutical ingredients used in Byzantine Greece, with a particular focus on popular medicine in late 13th century Cyprus. Our case study is based on one source, John the Physician’s Therapeutics (JPT), along with a comparative study of other scholarly and non-scholarly texts. Our main goal was to develop a new, documented and transferable methodology to address a key, unresolved challenge when working with such texts, namely our ability to identify with confidence the individual ingredients, primarily plants, minerals and burnt materials, cited. This is an essential step in analysis of pharmaceutical practices. Practical research at Royal Holloway focused on the understudied burnt substances and minerals that were added to medication. Ingredients identified have been mapped onto their current pharmaceutical uses thus exploring potential interest to pharmacological research. Our multidisciplinary team consists of experts from the field of philology, botany, ethnopharmacology and geology. Our final output and data will be made available open access to maximise impact and reach.

The main approaches in relation to minerals and burnt substances included: 1. Comparison between JPT and the ancient Greek handbook, De Materia Medica, written by Pedanius Dioscorides (most Western and Islamic pharmacy derives from Dioscorides) to see if there are likely candidates for materials; 2. Comparisons of JPT with recipes and materials used in the centuries before and after; 3. Analysis of the modern uses of minerals and burnt materials in modern medicine; 4. Experiments to establish what reactions and final materials are and hence what was used and why it may have been effective or why it may not have been; 5. Geology and Mineralogy of Cyprus; 6. Modern knowledge of minerals in medicine; 7. Conditions and treatments.

In this presentation I will concentrate on a series of experiments reconstructing the use of burnt material in recipes and consider the potential pharmaceutical use and potential efficacy. These include the use of cuttlefish bones, deer bones, date and olive stones as well as discussing some of the issues identifying the mineral species used.