A View Into Medicine’s Roots Through an Ancient Text
古抄本看希臘人如何治病
By Mark Schrope

The first time Grigory Kessel held the ancient manuscript, which has animal-hide pages more than 1,000 years old, it seemed oddly familiar.
這本古代動物皮手抄本歷史超過千年，凱塞頭一次拿起，竟覺似曾相識。

A Syriac scholar at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, Dr. Kessel was sitting in the library of the manuscript’s owner, a wealthy collector in Baltimore. Dr. Kessel realized that just three weeks earlier, in a library at Harvard University, he had seen a single orphaned page that was similar to these pages.
凱塞博士是德國馬爾堡市菲利普大學的古敘利亞文學者。當時他在手抄本的主人、美國巴爾的摩一個富裕收藏家的圖書館裡。他想起就在三周前，他在哈佛大學圖書館看到一張落單的書頁，跟這本的書頁相似。

The manuscript he held contained a hidden translation of an ancient, influential medical text by Galen of Pergamon, a Greco-Roman physician and philosopher who died in 200 A.D. It was missing pages and Dr. Kessel was suddenly convinced one of them was in Boston.
他拿的手抄本暗藏一套年代久遠、影響廣泛的醫學文獻的譯文。撰寫文獻的是生於希臘的古羅馬醫生兼哲學家蓋倫，蓋倫死於西元兩百年。抄本缺了幾頁，凱塞認為其中一頁就在波士頓的哈佛大學。

Dr. Kessel’s realization in February 2013 marked the beginning of a global hunt for the other lost leaves, a search that culminated in May with the digitization of the final rediscovered page in Paris.
凱塞2013年2月這樣想之後，開始到全球各地尋找失蹤的書頁，今年5月把他最後在巴黎發現的那一頁數位化，搜尋就此告一段落。

Scholars are just beginning to pore over the text, the oldest known copy of Galen’s “On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs.” It may well provide new insights into medicine’s roots and into the spread of this new science across the ancient world.
學界才剛開始研究這本抄本，這是蓋倫著作「論簡單藥物的混合與療效」目前最早的副本，或可在醫學起源和古代新科學知識傳播兩方面提供新洞見。

The manuscript is a palimpsest: older text covered up by newer writing. It was a common practice centuries ago, a medieval form of recycling. In this case, 11th-century Syrian scribes had scraped away Galen’s medical text and had overwritten hymns on the parchment.
這抄本是重寫本，舊內容被新內容覆蓋。這是幾世紀前常見的作法，是資源回收再利用的中世紀形式。就這抄本而言，11世紀敘利亞抄寫員把蓋倫的醫學內容擦掉，在羊皮紙上寫聖歌。

For centuries, Galen’s “Simple Drugs” was required reading for aspiring physicians, the summation of ancient knowledge about medicine, patient care and pharmaceutical plants. Galen described a root that cures “roughness of the throat” and recommended hemp as an earache remedy that “does not produce flatulence” (though it “dries out the semen”).
曾有好幾世紀，蓋倫的「簡單藥物」是有志從醫者必讀的書，集古代醫學、病患護理和藥用植物知識的大成。書中描述一種植物的根能治「喉嚨不適」，建議用大麻治耳痛，指出這種療法「不會引發胃腸脹氣」（卻會「讓精液乾涸」）。

Much of “Simple Drugs” was eventually translated into Syriac, a form of Aramaic used by Middle Eastern Christian communities. The text of the manuscript in Baltimore, most likely from the ninth century A.D., is a copy of the first Syriac translation, itself painstakingly completed in the sixth century A.D. by Sergius of Reshaina, a Syriac physician and priest.
此書大部分內容最後都譯為古敘利亞文，這是中東基督徒使用的亞拉姆文的一種。巴爾的摩抄本原始醫學內容的年代最有可能落在西元9世紀，是第一本古敘利亞文譯本的副本。第一本古敘利亞文譯本是在西元6世紀由古敘利亞醫生兼牧師塞爾吉斯苦心譯成。

“Simple Drugs” was an 11-book treatise. Sergius’s translations were copied and recopied for centuries. Little is known of the history of the Baltimore manuscript, formally known as the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, from its recycling in the 11th century until the 1920s, when it was sold to a collector in Germany. The manuscript fell again from public view until 2002, when it was purchased by another collector. He has not been identified.
「簡單藥物」是一套11冊的專書。塞爾吉斯的譯本被輾轉傳抄數世紀。巴爾的摩抄本正式名稱是「古敘利亞文蓋倫重寫本」，從11世紀重寫到1920年賣給德國收藏家之間的流傳經過少有人知。1920年後抄本再度從公眾眼前消失，直到2002年被另一收藏家買下為止。買家身分從未公開。

In 2009, the Galen Palimpsest was lent to the Walters Art Museum for spectral imaging that would reveal the erased Galen text. Each page is photographed at extremely high resolution with varying colors and configurations of light, which in various ways illuminate the inks, grooves from writing and parchment itself. Computer algorithms exploit these variations to maximize the visibility of the undertext.
2009年，收藏家把蓋倫重寫本借給巴爾的摩「華特斯美術館」，讓館方用光譜影像技術使擦去的書中文字重現。館方用超高解析度為每一頁照相，照相時多次變換光線顏色和光源配置方式，用各種方法顯出墨跡、擦痕與羊皮紙本身紋路。電腦演算法分析這些不同的痕跡，以便盡可能清楚呈現被覆蓋的文字。

The resulting images went online to be studied by scholars like Dr. Kessel, who eventually arranged to see the Galen Palimpsest firsthand.
分析出的影像上網後，凱塞這類學者開始研究，最後凱塞透過安排親睹了蓋倫重寫本。

The Harvard leaf did fill one of the gaps in the Galen Palimpsest. Six more were missing. He found one in a catalog from the St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai Desert in Egypt. Another leaf turned up at the National Library of France in Paris. At the Vatican’s library in Rome, he found three other leaves. The seventh missing page is believed to have been blank.
哈佛大學那一頁果然是蓋倫重寫本缺漏的書頁之一。還有六頁失蹤。他在埃及西奈沙漠聖加大利納修道院的古物清單中發現一頁。另一頁出現在巴黎法國國家圖書館。在羅馬的梵蒂岡圖書館他另外找到三頁。一般認為失蹤的第七頁是個空白頁。

No one knew how much of ”Simple Drugs” might be hidden in the Galen Palimpsest. The only other known Syriac copy resides at the British Library in London and includes only Books 6 to 8. The full text of “Simple Drugs” is known to scholars, but only from more recent translations in languages other than Syriac. As texts went through multiple rounds of copying, they underwent significant changes. The Galen Palimpsest could offer telling insights into how the ancient Greeks treated the ill.
沒人知道蓋倫重寫本暗藏「簡單藥物」多少內容。目前唯一的另一本古敘利亞文副本由倫敦大英博物館典藏，只包含第六到第八冊內容。學界已經知道「簡單藥物」整套書的內容，不過是透過晚近、不是古敘利亞文的譯本得知。原書內容經過多次轉抄，變化很大。蓋倫重寫本或能讓人深入了解古希臘人如何治病。

“The Galenic system is completely bonkers,” said Siam Bhayro, a specialist in early Jewish studies at the University of Exeter in England. Still, it was the best thinking available in an era in which the very idea of medical science was relatively new.
英格蘭艾賽司特大學早期猶太文化專家貝若說：「蓋倫的思想體系徹底瘋狂。」不過，那已是當時最先進的思想，那個時代人們對醫學的概念還很陌生。

“It’s likely to be a central text once it’s fully deciphered,” said Peter Pormann, a Graeco-Arabic expert at the University of Manchester in England. “We might discover things we really can’t dream of yet.”
英格蘭曼徹斯特大學「希臘文譯為阿拉伯文運動」專家波曼說：「一旦抄本原文完全辨識出來，可能會變成重要文獻。我們可能會發現從來沒想過的事。」

Little of Galen’s advice would stand up to modern scrutiny. Like other ancient physicians, he believed health was controlled by four “humors” in the body.
蓋倫的建議幾乎無法通過現代科學檢驗。他一如古代其他醫生，相信健康由人體四種「體液」決定。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/science/medicines-hidden-roots-in-an-ancient-manuscript.html

2015-06-16聯合報/G5版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 李京倫譯 原文參見紐時週報十版上