Book Notes

Gargilius Martialis (ca. 210–260 CE) wrote a short treatise on the Remedies From Vegetables and Fruits (Medicinae ex holeribus et pomis), a compilation of the larger and works most known as De materia medicaby the Greek Dioscorides (first century CE), Natural History, books 22–29, by Pliny (23–79 CE) and Galen (129–after 216[?] CE), On Mixtures and Properties of Simple Medicines. The author of the present volume, who has recently published a scholarly edition of Gargilius' Remedies, Les remèdes tirés des légumes et des fruits(Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2002), gives here, under a title that promises more than the work contains, a French translation of some sixty chapters from the Remedies.

Each translated chapter starts with the identification of the plant and ends with short explanatory notes. The volume includes a large introduction on Gargilius's life and works, authentic or of discussed attribution (pp. xxi–xxxii); a table of ancient measurement units (p. xxxvi); a glossary of the technical terms used in the translation (pp. 97–110); and a bibliography on Gargilius, ancient medicine (primary sources), and secondary literature; as well as thirty color illustrations (pp. 77–96), mainly representations of Roman mosaics and frescoes reproduced from earlier publications and not necessarily identified with precision, with representations of the materia medica mentioned in the Remedies. As the author herself writes (p. xxxiii), this is a new translation (that is, it is not the same as the one in her 2002 scholarly edition) made for a wider audience interested in plants, their history, and their uses in antiquity. Perhaps this explains why the volume reproduces on many points the historiographical tradition without necessarily providing updated information.

Maimonides. Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 6–9. A Parallel Arabic–English Edition. Edited, translated, and annotated by Gerrit Bos. Brigham Young University Middle Eastern Medical Texts Initiative, Medical Works of Moses Maimonides. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2007. xxvii + 160 pp. $39.95, £22.00 (ISBN-10: 0-8425-2664-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-8425-2664-7).

Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 6–9is the second in a series of five volumes that will cover all twenty-five treatises of influential medieval thinker Maimonides' Medical Aphorisms. The treatises in this volume center on prognosis, aetiology, therapy, and pathology (treatises 6–9, respectively). Most of the aphorisms in this volume are based on the works of Galen, and "some go back to works that are no longer available in the original Greek" (p. xvii). The original Arabic text of Maimonides' Aphorismsis presented, as well as an English translation.

The Editors