As V. Nutton says in the foreword (pp. vi–vii), ‘the enormous variety of healing practices found here makes this volume a valuable resource for understanding the medical world of Graeco-Roman Antiquity’. This volume is in fact entirely devoted to medical texts and the content of the texts, which are here edited for the first time, ranges from ‘classical’ medical texts by Hippocrates or well-known later authors such as Dioscorides and Galen, who have come down to us through the medieval manuscript tradition, to lost authors such as Heras and Asclepiades and adespota, that can be reconstructed and interpreted only on the basis of the few lines preserved in fragments. We find accurate copies of literary value near to (occasional?) selections of recipes, lists of ingredients and official documents consisting in reports of doctors.
In the first part the authorial texts are all edited by Leith. In the group of Hippocratic texts there is another copy of Aphorisms (5219, third/fourth century a.d.), the most widely read Hippocrates text, one of Epidemics 1 (never attested before on papyrus, 5222, second/third century a.d.), one of On the diseases of women, a fragment from the same roll as P. Köln VII 311 (5221, third century a.d.). Most interesting are two fragments from the same roll which contain the final part of Hippocrates' On nutriment and the initial part of On the usage of liquids (5220, second/third century a.d.). It is a unique combination, because they are not close together either in any medieval manuscript or in the Hippocrates text read by Erotian in composing his Lexicon of Hippocrates in the first century a.d. A copy of Prognostic (5223), only the second papyrus published to date, is relatively ancient (later first century a.d.) and shows traces of extensive correction also by a second hand: perhaps the scribe had a damaged exemplar and in one case left a blank space. The corrector apparently used a second copy of Prognostic.
Three new testimonies of Dioscorides of Anazarba (5224, 5225, 5226) double the number of ancient copies known so far: they are dated to the second, third and fourth century a.d., two fragments from a roll, one from a codex. No clue indicates that there was any illustration, despite what Pliny says about the presence of illustration in Dioscorides' work and, as to the text's tradition, 5226 confirms that the papyrus probably did not include some extra chapters interpolated in part of the manuscript tradition.
Three late-antique fragmentary codexes (fifth–sixth centuries a.d.) testify to different typologies of Galen's reception: two copies of the De locis affectis and of the commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics 3 (5227, 5229), which offer some good variants but, most interesting, an excerpted copy of De sanitate tuenda (5228) that shows striking resemblances to Oribasius' shorter version and shares omissions with Aëtius, confirming the trend of epitomising Galen's text that was followed later by the Arabic authors.
Among the new texts, a pharmacological fragment of the early second century a.d. is hesitantly attributed to Heras' Narthex but, due to the tradition of this kind of work – i.e. the long lists of recipes which construct the main part of the pharmacological treatises – it is difficult to decide whether the fragment derives from the original work of the author cited (here Heras) or from a selection made by a later author.
Some adespota are particularly precious because they throw new light on authors and schools which were lost before the end of antiquity. Asclepiades of Bithynia, living between the second and first century b.c., an influential materialist physician in Galen's age and beyond, is known only by indirect tradition. In this volume two testimonies give us new fragments: a passing mention probably explaining Asclepiades' aetiology in a text on gangrene (5236, second/third century a.d.) and a longer quotation in an anonymous commentary on Epidemics 1 (5231, first/second century a.d.). The importance of the second papyrus is outstanding for different reasons. First, the text is written by the same hand on the back of a Greek–Latin glossary, so featuring the owner of the papyrus as a person with intellectual ambition, interested both in Latin and in high-level medical scholarship. Second, it reveals that Asclepiades too composed a commentary on Epidemics 1 (so far unknown), that was long and accurate in identifying the nature of the disease and the cause of the symptoms in the second case history from the final section of Epidemics 1, and also introduced comments on therapy which are absent from Hippocrates' text. Third, the author of the commentary is patently hostile to Asclepiades' general approach to disease and very severe in his judgement on Asclepiades' commentary itself. He presents himself as interested only in therapy, implying that the research of causes is a waste of time, and refers to ‘self-evidence’ (ἐνάργεια) as a means of diagnosis. These clues, combined with chronological considerations, point to the Empirical school as the cultural background of the author, and to the hypothesis that the author could have been Heraclides of Tarentum. But the scanty remains of this author do not permit us to go beyond suggesting Heraclides as a possibility.
Other adespota offer many points of interest. There is a treatise on the surgical treatment of haemorrhoids (5232, second/third century a.d.), with a quotation of Hippocrates' Aphorisms, a text on acute diseases, preserved in two papyri with substantial textual overlaps (5234, second century and 5233, second/third century a.d.), which seems to have been written by a Methodist physician, two further fragments (5235) from the papyrus codex P. Mil. Vogl. I 15 (MP3 2340), of the fourth century a.d., a treatise on the definition of acute and chronic diseases in a question-and-answer format (with the mention of the Methodist physician Thessalus of Tralles); a medical text focused on therapy based on cold and hot from a roll of the second century a.d. (5337). Two further texts in the form of a questionnaire, probably school oriented, both of the second/third century a.d., are 5238 and 5239, the former mainly therapeutic, the latter offering definitions.
Then there is a group of fragments with ophthalmological content, the only specialised field in ancient medicine, a text illustrating the surgical treatment of eye conditions (5240), a catechism (5241) and recipes for collyria (5243). They are mainly edited by Hirt, who also edited a group of fragments with recipes (5244–51, with the exception of 5250 by Henry).
At the end of the volume are documents that reflect more directly the practical life and the social role of the physicians in the area of Oxyrhynchus: two sheets of papyrus containing lists of ingredients (5252, 5253, fifth–sixth century a.d.), each with the quantity. They are not recipes but probably lists of drugs needed for general stocking by a physician or a pharmacist. Some of the items are used in the production of perfumes. The last section, edited by N. Gonis and Hirt, comprises doctors' reports (5254–7). When a victim of assault (or in some way injured) asked the strategus or another authority to make an official assessment of his condition, the strategus ordered one of his assistants to visit the victim together with a doctor, who wrote the report of which we have here some record. More often we have only the upper part, which gives the name of the strategus and so permits the document to be dated. Only in one case (5256) does the fragment contain the last part, from which one can infer the nature of the injuries. All the presentations are impeccable and the volume is accurately printed, according to the tradition of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series.
