Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical Literature by Anna Gili HARDBACK

Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical LiteratureThe Kit?b al-Malak? and Related Texts\nAuthor(s): Anna Gili\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: De Gruyter, Germany\nImprint: De Gruyter\nISBN-13: 9783111330877, 978-3111330877\nSynopsis\nRecent studies have underlined the importance of consulting different sources to trace global histories of diseases. However, due to a lack of critical editions of medical works, leprosy is poorly understood, and a wider interpretation of it as a historical phenomenon is yet to be proposed. \n\nBuilding on a broad critical editing and analysis of Arabic and Latin texts, this book traces a new history of leprosy moving from late antiquity to the Islamic and Latin Middle Ages, thus proving the necessity of a comparative approach to grasp its Mediterranean scope. Challenging established historical reconstructions, this study demonstrates that Arabic texts were familiar with a scientific approach to contagiousness. It also shows how, when faced with the diffusion.