Isabella Bonati
Isabella Bonati is currently an Assistant Researcher at the Universidade de Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Clássicos. She is an External Researcher at the North-West University of Potchefstroom, South Africa, where she has previously worked as a Researcher and Temporary Lecturer. She has completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Papyrology at the Department of Letters, Arts, History and Society of the University of Parma, Italy, where she was involved in research activities within the ERC project DIGMEDTEXT (Online Humanities Scholarship: A Digital Medical Library based on Ancient Texts), funded by the EC. She holds a PhD in Papyrology from the University of Parma and she received an Yggdrasil grant 2012-2013 at the University of Oslo. Her main research interests are concerned with papyrology, especially lexical studies. Other research interests include classical philology, linguistics, archaeology, history of medicine. She published articles in various international journals such as Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (ZPE), Marburger Beiträge zur Antiken Handels-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte (MBAH), Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (BASP), and Early Science and Medicine (ESM). She also published a book entitled "Glosse esotiche nei frammenti di Ipponatte. Gli esotismi nella lingua del giambografo di Efeso" (Voces peregrinae in the Fragments of Hipponax. Foreign Loan-words in the language of the iambographer of Ephesus), EAI, Saarbrücken 2015, and the monograph "Il lessico dei vasi e dei contenitori greci nei papiri. Specimina per un repertorio lessicale degli angionimi greci" (The Vocabulary of Greek Vases and Containers in the Papyri. Specimens for a Dictionary of Ancient Greek Vase Names) APF-B 37, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2016.
Supervisors: Previous Supervisor: Dr. Johan Steencamp, NorthWest University, and SA
Supervisors: Previous Supervisor: Dr. Johan Steencamp, NorthWest University, and SA
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Talks by Isabella Bonati
In the lexicon lies one of the most considerable contributions of Graeco-Roman medicine to modern medicine. Papyri are vivid tools for exploring the medical micro-language in the concrete and everyday dimensions of antiquity. When crossing disciplinary boundaries, in tight dialogue with the other ancient sources, papyri provide original insight into the diachronic semantic developments of medical words and the key concepts of medicine. Therefore, they contribute to enlightening the heritage and the intellectual influence of antiquity on modern medical discourse.
The last part of my paper will be devoted to illustrating some specimina (such as metaphors and compounds), which have lived on in the contemporary world of healthcare, taken from the language of medicine as attested in the papyri and the other sources. We will consider both the case of termini technici having preserved a certain semantic continuity between antiquity and present, and the case in which the meaning of the modern version of an ancient term matches its ancient counterpart only partially.
After an introduction on the contribution of papyri to our knowledge of ancient medicine and its practice, this paper will focus on the topic of facing diseases according to the testimonies from Greek papyri. Special attention will be devoted to references to diseases and other health issues in informal documents like private correspondence. Sometimes, the diseases are explicitly labelled, sometimes not, but the dramatic circumstances described by the authors of these documents make their anonymous voices particularly vivid. The immediacy of those descriptions brings papyri closer to us especially in those cases that can, to some extent, be paralleled with the challenging Covid-19 situation we are currently experiencing.
La prima descrizione scientifica di τερηδών si trova nel secondo libro del trattato ippocratico De morbis (capitoli 7 e 24). Si soffermano su questo pathos soprattutto Celso e Galeno, mentre, fatta eccezione per un lungo estratto di Eliodoro in Oribasio (Coll. XLVI 22 (CMG VI 2,1, 232,18-234,17 Raeder), non si incontrano se non sporadiche menzioni negli autori tardo-antichi. La sola testimonianza papiracea su τερηδών è costituita da GMP I 6,19-20, un frammentario questionario su papiro di tardo II-inizio III sec. d.C. Le fonti si concentrano sulla definizione di questa condizione, che porta l’osso a vari stadi di deterioramento, sulle dinamiche e la sintomatologia, nonché sui diversi trattamenti farmacologici e chirurgici.
Per quanto la condizione patologica chiamata τερηδών, in base a come ci viene descritta, sembra essere stata abbastanza comune nell’antichità – fatto che pare confermato dall’analisi paleopatologica di resti umani dal Neolitico in avanti –, l’identificazione con patologie del lessico medico moderno resta ipotetica.