2018/07/18 by Erin Connelly, Charo I. del Genio, Connelly, Erin +2
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Gut microbiota and health #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1807.07127
openalex publication_date 2018/07/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The pharmacopeia used by physicians and lay people in medieval Europe has\nlargely been dismissed as placebo or superstition. While we now recognise that\nsome of the materia medica used by medieval physicians could have had useful\nbiological properties, research in this area is limited by the labour-intensive\nprocess of searching and interpreting historical medical texts. Here, we\ndemonstrate the potential power of turning medieval medical texts into\ncontextualised electronic databases amenable to exploration by algorithm. We\nuse established methodologies from network science to reveal statistically\nsignificant patterns in ingredient selection and usage in a key text, the\nfifteenth-century Lylye of Medicynes, focusing on remedies to treat symptoms of\nmicrobial infection. We discuss the potential that these patterns reflect\nrational medical decisions. In providing a worked example of data-driven\ntextual analysis, we demonstrate the potential of this approach to encourage\ninterdisciplinary collaboration and to shine a new light on the\nethnopharmacology of historical medical texts.\n