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A TEXTUAL NOTE ON PAUL OF AEGINA, PRAGMATEIA 6.88*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2014
Extract
Paul of Aegina's (fl. c. 630) Pragmateia is the only extant Greek medical text from antiquity that discusses the extraction of arrows and small missiles. In his book on surgery, Paul details how to extract arrows according to their properties and the parts of the body which they have wounded (6.88). He prefaces his instructions by describing how arrows differ in their material, figure, size, number, mode, and power. Paul's account of arrow varieties appears to reflect the environment of his medical practice, seventh-century Alexandria, for he refers to Egyptian arrow types when listing the material composition and sizes of different arrows.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 2014
Footnotes
*
The author wishes to thank Prof. Peter E. Pormann, Dr Loreleï Vanderheyden, and the anonymous reader for their comments and suggestions.
References
1 For non-medical authors who mention arrow wounds and extractions, see Salazar, C.F., ‘Getting the point: Paul of Aegina on arrow wounds’, Sudhoffs Archiv 82 (1998), 170–87Google ScholarPubMed, at 178.
2 Paul, Pragmateia, 6.88.1–2/II.129.20–130.24, Heiberg, J.L. (ed.), Paulus Aegineta (Leipzig and Berlin, 1924).Google Scholar
3 Although we possess very little biographical information on Paul's life, he seems to have practised and perhaps taught medicine in Alexandria around the time of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ’s conquest of the city (a.d. 642). See Pormann, P.E., The Oriental Tradition of Paul of Aegina's Pragmateia (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2004) 4–8Google ScholarPubMed; Scarborough, J., ‘Teaching surgery in Late Byzantine Alexandria’, in Horstmanshoff, M. (ed.), Hippocrates and Medical Education: Selected Papers Presented at the XIIth International Hippocrates Colloquium, Universiteit Leiden, 24–26 August 2005 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2010), 235–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 253–4, for further details on Paul's life and works.
4 Paul, Pragmateia, 6.88.1/II.129.21–5; 6.88.2/II.130.10–12.
5 See Paul, Pragmateia, II.130, n. 12.
6 In their respective translations of Paul's chapter, Adams, F., The Seven Books of Paulus Ægineta (London, 1844–7)Google Scholar, 3.418, transcribes the word as micca, and Salazar (n. 1), 181, as myota.
7 Dr Loreleï Vanderheyden suggests per litteras that μυωτά may be etymologically linked with the Coptic verb ‘to kill’, for which see W. E. Crum (1939), A Coptic Dictionary, p. 201.
8 See Pormann (n. 3), who attributes the fragmentary Arabic translation of the Pragmateia, which is preserved in the bilingual Arabic–Greek MS Parisinus Graecus 2293, to Ḥunayn ibn ʾIshāq on linguistic grounds.
9 ذنبانية] Qānūn fī ṭ-ṭibb (New Delhi, 1982–7)Google Scholar, 230.
10 Ibn Sīnā lived in Persia, while Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq worked as a translator and physician in Baghdad. For information about Ibn Sīnā's life, see Ullmann, M., Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden and Cologne, 1970), 152–6Google Scholar; Goichon, A.M., ‘Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusain ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā’, Encyclopaedia of Islam III (2006)Google Scholar, 3.941a, and about Ḥunayn's, see G. Bergsträsser, ‘Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq über die syrischen und arabische Galen-Übersetzungen’, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (1925), 17; Cooperson, M., ‘The purported autobiography of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’, Edebiyât 7 (1996), 235–49Google Scholar; Gutas, D., Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London and New York, 1998), 133–45Google Scholar; and Strohmaier, G., ‘Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq’, Encyclopaedia of Islam II (2006)Google Scholar, 3.578b–81a.
11 The definition of ḏunbāniya is unclear. The root ḏ–n–b means ‘tail’ (Freytag, G.W.F., Lexicon arabico-latinum (Halle, 1833), 2.96–7)Google Scholar, so the word could signify ‘something relating to the tail’.
12 Ullmann, M., Wörterbuch zu den griechischen–arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts: Supplement, Band 1: A–O (Wiesbaden, 2006)Google Scholar, 713.