The series Medical Traditions is devoted to the transmission of medicine in handwritten form throughout world history. Medical traditions result from the codification and relaying of knowledge gained, in most cases, through a centuries-long practice, and are typically attested by an abundant textual corpus spanning a vast geographical area, and equally vast period of time. Medicine is understood here in its broadest sense, with the multiple components that contributed to the healthcare of populations.
Monographs and collective volumes in the series will trace the many extant witnesses of relevant texts and reconstruct their linkages, provide critical editions or diplomatic transcriptions of significant works, or address such themes as the written codification of practical knowledge, the transformation mechanisms at work in the written transmission process, the circulation of information within and between groups, translations and their possible adaptations to local realities, the transition from writing to printing, or the historiography of medical traditions studies.
Medical Traditions publishes original works resulting from innovative, cross-disciplinary research aimed at providing both primary data for further developments and new insights on any facet of the complex process of conveying medical knowledge. It is overseen by an international scientific board, bringing together specialists from different disciplines involved in the study of textual and medical traditions.
Series Editor:
Alain Touwaide, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington, DC, and The Huntington, San Marino, CA, USA.
A historian of medical texts from Antiquity to the 20th century, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean, Alain Touwaide explores the processes at play in the transmission of written records of medical practice and medical information across centuries, with a special attention to trans-cultural exchanges.
Scientific Committee:
Michael Friedrich, Professor, Department of Chinese Studies and Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, specializes in intellectual history, manuscript studies, and the European reception of Chinese culture.
Jost Gippert, Senior Professor, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, investigates the history and diachrony of ancient and less-studied modern languages with a special view on the material basis of their transmission.
Marilena Maniaci, Professor of Manuscript Studies, Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale, studies the history of Greek and Latin book materials and techniques, and methods of analysis and description of medieval manuscripts.
Paolo Odorico, Director of Studies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociale, Paris, is a Byzantinist with interests in history and sociology of literature in Byzantium. He has published critical editions of Byzantine texts and post-byzantine archives.
Steve M. Oberhelman, Professor of Classics and George Sumey Chair in Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University, College Station, works on Hellenistic and Byzantine Greek cultural and social history, with a special emphasis on dream texts, dreams in medicine, and practical healing manuals in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries.
Dominik Wujastyk, Professor and Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, is interested in the history of Indian medicine and science, the history of Sanskrit grammar, Indian miniature painting, and the study and preservation of Sanskrit manuscripts.
