Armenian Medicine. Ancient Sources and Innovative Techniques

Context: Armenia has long suffered from isolation due to political circumstances, which prevented international research collaboration, but the country recently opened up to the West. We have secured access to the Yerevan Matenadaran and the Matenadaran of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the two most comprehensive premodern Armenian manuscript collections worldwide. They contain invaluable cultural heritage, some of which survived the Armenian genocide.
Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Armenia was a key producer and exporter of pharmaceuticals, yet we know very little about the composition of these goods or the underlying medical system. We hypothesise that these treatments were of high quality, and therefore potentially of use for modern-day medicine.
Armenians and Greeks co-inhabited larger parts of Asia Minor, and since Greek medicine is relatively well researched, we are able to deploy a comparative approach between these two medical cultures rapidly and flexibly, which will allow us to identify valid treatments. We will consult Latin evidence, too.
Challenges: Any research on premodern medicine faces two main challenges, retrospective diagnosis and the identification of pharmaceuticals mentioned in premodern texts. We will use an interdisciplinary approach in which sciences (microbiology, genomics) inform humanities (manuscript studies, medical history) and vice versa to answer these questions.
Interdisciplinary research is often complicated by communication problems. We have been working together for three years and co- designed this proposal. Therefore, most of these matters have already been addressed. The PL has previously led a large, international collaboration between sciences and humanities, and we will draw on this experience (Wellcome Collaborative Award 217861/ Z/19/Z).
Aims and objectives: Our approach will lead to the creation of a new discipline, Premodern Medicine Studies, which will bridge the divide between sciences and humanities...