Streamlining Galen: Medical Summaries and the Transmission of Medicine in Medieval Islam (360G-Wellcome-212385_Z_18_Z)

We propose to study medical teaching and practice and the changing face of Galenic medicine in Islam through the medium of a prolific but largely unstudied genre of writings, Arabic summaries of Galen. A fundamental re-evaluation of these sources will show how they served as primary learning tools for medical students and doctors, a means of demonstrating medical credentials, and as instruments for the reconfiguration of the ancient medical heritage. In addition to a comprehensive survey of Arabic Galenic summaries, we will compile and digitise a select corpus of such texts, and analyse and compare them with the Galen treatises in Arabic translation that formed the basis of the summaries, using digital tools and techniques of close reading. The proposed outcomes include (1) a study of the history, nature and purposes of summaries in Arabic medical literature; (2) monograph studies, editions and translations of a number of these works; (3) articles on individual authors of summaries and their working methods; (4) the proceedings of a conference on the role of auxiliary texts in the evolution of Galenic medicine in antiquity and the Middle Ages; and (5) a publicly available digital corpus of summaries and related texts.