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Ancient Medicine

The Penn Libraries have a near comprehensive collection of ancient medicine scholarship published in both the English and German languages.

Plant illustrations from an arabic manuscript.

Ancient medicine is a growing field crossing disciplinary boundaries at Penn and across academia. The growth of the published research reflects this interest that is manifested in the work of Penn faculty, graduate students and undergraduates. The Penn Libraries have a near comprehensive collection of Ancient medicine scholarship published in both the English and German languages. Our collections include complete runs of the series Studies in Ancient Medicine (Brill), Corpus medicorum Graecorum (Akademie Verlag), Scientia Graeco-Arabica, and the relatively new series: Medicine and the Body in Antiquity (Routledge).  The Penn Libraries have significant holdings in the theories and practice of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome as well as important studies in the Arabic. This includes about 180 titles in Special Collections and Rare Books and Manuscripts, close to 400 titles in the original Greek or Latin, nearly 400 in Arabic, and about 500 titles by or about Galen or Hippocrates.

Collection strengths

Highlights include Galen’s works in French & Greek and Hippocrates’ works in French & Greek from the series: Collection des universités de France; Galen on Nerves, Veins and Arteries a critical edition and translation from the Arabic (in Arabic and English), Epidemics in Context : Greek Commentaries on Hippocrates in the Arabic Tradition, Concordantia in corpus Hippocraticum = Concordance des oeuvres hippocratiques, and Eris vs. Aemulatio: Valuing Competition in Classical Antiquity from Brill’s Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava, which includes an essay by Penn Classical Studies professor, Ralph M. Rosen

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