Antique Surgery Between Orient and Occident: The Surgical Handbooks (cheirourgoúmena) by Leonides, Archigenes, Heliodoros and Antyllos - a Medico-Philological Inventory Based upon the Preserved Fragments.

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Mathias Witt
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2013 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 246321084

Antique Greek surgery reached its peak in the scientifically prosperous climate of Hellenistic Alexandria. The original treatises dating from this period are lost. However, the knowledge contained in them has been preserved in the compendia by the so-called "pneumatic" surgeons Leonides, Archigenes (1st century A. D.), Heliodoros and Antyllos (2nd / 3rd century A. D.). The compendium last in chronology and possibly the most mature of the aforementioned ones is by Antyllos of Alexandria. According to later authors, he was regarded as one of the best surgeons of antiquity. He is the only Hellenistic surgeon whose ideas are proven to have spread to the Arabic world - a fact that is shown by quotes of his work occurring in the works by ar-Râzî and 'Alî ibn 'Îsâ. Even further Arabic medical authors might have drawn upon him. However, to this day this hypothesis cannot be proven, since not even a basic inventory of his Arabic fragments exists so far. This is equally true for all his Greek fragments and as well for the fragments of other pneumatic surgeons, all of which still have to be inventorised and analysed. The pneumatic surgeons are the only important physicians of antiquity whose fragments have not yet been edited according to the standards of modern philology.The request for continuation of the project is motivated by the following aims: the Arabic Antyllos text ist to be further completed by using important manuscripts from Istanbul that have not been taken into account by researchers so far. Finally the manuscript of the Antyllus study has to be reworked according to the guidelines of the publisher. Furthermore, the collections of fragments of Leonides, Archigenes and Heliodorus are to be completed, commented on and to be made ready for publication. Because of the often intertwined quotations and due to passages of sometimes unclear authorship, a computerized stylometric analysis is necessary to suplement the study. In addition, the elective soft tissue surgery of Celsus' (De medicina, book 7) is to be included in the overall view, since it shows remarkable parallels and dependencies with the fragments collected so far. With the inclusion of Celsus surgery, a study of all that has been transmitted of elective soft tissue surgery from antiquity will be available.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants