Epidemics in Context: Hippocrates, Galen, and Hunayn between East and West to be held at the Warburg Institute on 12-13 November 2010 (360G-Wellcome-092653_Z_10_Z)

The conference will build on the current Wellcome project headed by P. E. Pormann and S. Swain to edit and translate into English the medieval Arabic version of Galen's commentary on the Hippocratic Epidemics. A team of international scholars will present papers on aspects of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic medicine in the context of our new work on the first part of Galen's commentary. Epidemics is one of the most important parts of the Hippocratic Corpus and is famous for its inclusion of many case histories. The Greek text is in poor shape and the Arabic of the great translator-physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq is of value to the whole commentary and specifically for those parts lost in Greek (including most of Bk 2 and Bk 6). Our new text and translation of Galen on Epidemics Bks 1 and 2 will be available before the conference as the focus of the discussions. It offers a first-class opportunity for leading scholars to make comparisons between the Arabic-Islamic tradition and its Greek predecessor. The resulting volume will appeal to all those interested in ancient and medieval medicine and the cultural-scientific legacy of antiquity which is shared between East and West.