PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Burridge, Claire
TI  - Drugs From Afar
AID  - 10.3368/hopp.67.1.51
DP  - 2025 Dec 01
TA  - History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals
PG  - 51--86
VI  - 67
IP  - 1
4099  - http://hopp.uwpress.org/content/67/1/51.short
4100  - http://hopp.uwpress.org/content/67/1/51.full
AB  - Pharmaceutical knowledge in the early medieval Latin West has rarely been described as innovative. A number of studies, however, have noted the occasional recording of “new” ingredients from the East, such as camphor and ambergris, which appear to have been unknown to Classical and Late Antique authorities in the West. Are these few examples simply exceptions that prove the rule, or do they point to more significant developments? To investigate this question, the present article examines a more wide-ranging and diverse corpus of surviving recipe literature (including marginal additions located outside medical compendia) than has previously been possible. In doing so, it reveals a more complex picture regarding the introduction, adoption, and adaptation of nonlocal medical knowledge in the early medieval Latin West. In particular, the article not only highlights additional examples of the previously identified “new” ingredients but also recognizes the “newness” of several other substances. Moreover, it traces patterns that emerge in the manuscript evidence and argues that these patterns hold significant implications for understanding how Eastern pharmaceutical knowledge moved and was absorbed, as well as how, ultimately, it may have helped to facilitate the swift uptake of Latin translations of Arabic medical texts.