Medecine et environnement dans l'Alexandrie medievale

Although Alexandria, thanks to its port, played a leading role throughout the Middle Ages in opening up Egypt to the Mediterranean, few monographs by Egyptian authors have been devoted to it. Besides the Kitab al-ilmam by al-Nuwayri al-Iskandarani (fl. 770/1360), there is this Epistle on the Nature of Alexandria by the Jewish physician Hibat Allah ibn Gumay' (d. 594/1198), who worked in Cairo in Saladin's entourage. Using the criteria of Hippocratic medicine as his paradigms, and after a six-month stay in the city, the author describes its health situation, specifying its topography and its exposure to the natural elements. He examines the diet and lifestyle of the city's inhabitants in the 6th/12th century, giving an overview of the food and drink they consumed and highlighting the ways in which this diet was or was not adapted to its environment, since, according to medieval medicine, the mismatch between climate and diet was the cause of humoral imbalances, which were a source of disease. This rich description concludes with dietary and therapeutic recommendations in line with the medical science of the time. A rare glimpse into life in medieval Alexandria, this book also offers an insight into the environmental applications of Hippocratic medicine.