Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West

by Timothy S. Miller

Over two thousand Byzantine manuscripts devoted to medical works survive in European libraries. A third of these contain works by a single author such as the second-century Galen of Pergamon; the remaining manuscripts have selections from different classical and Byzantine medical writers. In this second group of manuscripts, scattered among the selections culled from treatises by well-known physicians, are many anonymous antidotaria—lists of pharmaceutical treatments for specific diseases, some as long as eighty-five folios.