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Reviewed by:
  • Maimonides: On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs
  • Konstantinos Kapparis, Ph.D.
Gerrit Bos . Maimonides: On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs. Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University Press, 2009. lii, 373, (no price given).

The modern reader might find it hard to believe that more than 500 years after the discovery of the printing press, important sections of the legacy of humanity are still not in book form, but only survive in fragile manuscripts buried in the special collections of inaccessible libraries, still waiting to be transferred into the relative safety of the printed form. Moreover, it is equally astonishing that the works of significant authors, such as most of Galen with few exceptions, are still awaiting their first critical edition. This is why a project like this volume containing critical editions of all existing versions of Maimonides's work On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs is a most welcome addition to the growing international bibliography of ancient and medieval medical authors.

The volume contains the first ever critical edition of the Arabic original of Maimonides On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs with a facing English translation by Gerrit Bos, who has also prepared a critical edition of the Hebrew translation by Ibn Tibbon and the anonymous Hebrew translation (Zerahyah Hen). Michael R. McVaugh has prepared a critical edition of the three medieval Latin translations by Armengaud Blaise, Giovanni da Capua, and the anonymous Vatican translation. The volume also contains a very useful glossary of technical terms and medical materials in English, Hebrew, and Arabic (but not Latin), indexes to Ibn Tibbon's and Zerahyah's terms in the glossary, indexes to the Latin translations, a very useful subject index to the English translation, a general introduction mostly concerned with the manuscripts of the various versions contained in this volume and their relations, and rudimentary notes to the introduction and English translation compiled by Bos. This volume is part of a larger international project intended to produce modern [End Page 427] editions for all the works of Moses Maimonides (aka Moshe ben Maimon, or Abu Imran Musa ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Maymun).

The introduction opens with a brief biographical note on Maimonides and the date of the composition of this work. In the preface, the editors stress that this study of Maimonides was a practical manual for the benefit of the layman who might need immediate treatment after being poisoned or bitten, but not a manual for specialists. In this part of the introduction, the reader would expect more in terms of a good, all-around presentation of this work, its background, and place in the scholarship of the author, the period and the genre as a whole. Then, a brief presentation of the entire legacy of Maimonides is followed by a very informative discussion of the manuscripts. Eleven Arabic manuscripts are presented, but no stemma codicum (i.e., a diagram illustrating the relationship between manuscripts) is provided, and no reason is stated for this decision, as there is no explanation why Bos decided to use O as the basis for this edition (Bodl. Hunt. 427; Uri 608). Moreover, Bos does not explain his preferences regarding the manuscripts of the translation of Ibn Tibbon. By contrast, McVaugh explains clearly his preference for S (Paris, Sorbonne, 1031) and his editorial policy of mostly diplomatic transcription for the Vatican translation, which is transmitted in a single manuscript.

The notes of Bos on the English translation are of similar length and scope to those of Ian Johnston in his edition of Galen On Diseases and Symptoms (Cambridge University Press, 2006). To a large degree, the function of these notes is to supplement the apparatus criticus and warn the reader who cannot access the Arabic text about editorial choices which affect the English translation. This is an important function for a book which sets out to make this work of Maimonides more accessible to a wider readership. The notes also provide some explanations of obscure points and to a limited extent, perform the important task of exploring the intertextuality of this work. For example, Bos has correctly identified the source for the treatment, which Maimonides explicitly...

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