The Science of Compound Medicaments
The Arabic and Latin Science of Compound Medicaments
A New Reading of Book Ten of the «Practica Pantegni»
Anna Gili
11 November 2025 – 5 PM (CEST)
The medical encyclopaedia composed by the Arabic physician al-Majūsī (930-994), the Royal Book (al-Kitāb al-Malakī), includes in its practical section an entire book devoted to the science of compound medicaments. Rather than merely collecting lists of antidotes, it opens with a substantial introduction that innovates on earlier discussions of the reasons and methods for composing and administering such remedies.
Al-Majūsī defends the position of rationalist physicians concerning the necessity of using compound antidotes, and elaborates, among other points, on their usefulness as anaesthetics or in facilitating the ingestion of unpleasant substances. In the contest between disease and nature, he explains, compound antidotes are an indispensable weapon for the physician.
Notably, the Latin version by Constantine the African (1020-1087), preserved in a single Toledo manuscript, goes beyond mere translation of al-Majūsī’s doctrines. It transforms them into an even more philosophically informed discussion, substantiating the claims of the rationalist physicians by explaining how medicaments exert their virtus.
At the same time, Constantine enriched the Kitāb by embedding fragments of earlier Latin learning, thereby creating an original and unprecedented account of the science of composita that has until now remained largely inaccessible.
By presenting a selection of passages, this talk will highlight the main features of this hitherto neglected text together with its Latin adaptation.
About the Speaker ...
Anna Gili is a PhD student in Latin and Arabic philology at the University of Padua and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (cotutelle de thèse).
Her main research interest is the transmission of medical knowledge from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin during the Middle Ages. Her PhD project aims to critically edit and study the books on pathology in the medical encyclopaedia al-Kitāb al-Malakī, composed by ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Maǧūsī (10th c.) and in its two Latin translations, the Pantegni by Constantine the African and the Liber regalis by Stephen of Antioch.
