CHS-iMouseion has released MediManus, a platform dedicated to the Greek medical tradition and the study of medical manuscripts. Conceived as a virtual, multicomponent research environment, MediManus brings together a repository of digital images of medical manuscripts; original codicological, paleographical, and historical analyses not only of the manuscripts themselves but also of each of the medical works they contain—a distinctive feature of the platform; a Manuscript Annotation Tool (MaAT); and associated research and publication programs.
The platform addresses a significant scholarly need. The Census of Greek Medical Manuscripts (Touwaide 2016) has shown that the manuscripts transmitting the corpus of ancient Greek medical literature are twice as numerous as previously thought. MediManus seeks to facilitate further research by providing centralized access to these primary sources together with new scholarly analyses. The current release includes 456 manuscripts and original publications.
Approaching ancient Greek medicine as an uninterrupted practice spanning millennia, MediManus aims to develop and expand awareness of the significance and enduring value of ancient Greek medicine in the twenty-first century by fostering innovative scientific research within an interdisciplinary framework. MediManus welcomes collaborations at both the student and expert levels through its research programs as well as through the annotation tool (ipapadop@chs.harvard.edu).