What Secrets Do Ancient Medical Texts Hold?

The Smithsonian's Alain Touwaide studies ancient books to identify medicines used thousands of years ago

  • By Megan Gambino
  • Smithsonian magazine, May 2011, Subscribe
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Alain Touwaide Alain Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge.

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    In 2002, Alain Touwaide came across an article about the discovery, some years before, of a medical kit salvaged from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany. Divers had brought up a copper bleeding cup, a surgical hook, a mortar, vials and tin containers. Miraculously, inside one of the tins, still dry and intact, were several tablets, gray-green in color and about the size of a quarter.

    Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, recognized that the tablets were the only known samples of medicine preserved since antiquity. “I was going to do everything I could to get them,” he says.

    Touwaide, 57, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge. He is proficient in 12 languages, including ancient Greek, and he scours the globe searching for millennia-old medical manuscripts. Within their pages are detailed accounts and illustrations of remedies derived from plants and herbs.

    After 18 months of negotiations, Touwaide obtained two samples of the 2,000-year-old tablets from Italy’s Department of Antiquities. He then recruited Robert Fleischer, head geneticist at the Smithsonian’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics, to identify plant components in the pills. Fleischer was skeptical at first, figuring that the plants’ DNA was long degraded. “But once I saw plant fibers and little bits of ground-up plant material in close-up images of the tablets, I started to think maybe these really are well preserved,” he says.

    Over the past seven years, Fleischer has painstakingly extracted DNA from the samples and compared it with DNA in GenBank, a genetic database maintained by the National Institutes of Health. He has found traces of carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild onion, radish, yarrow, hibiscus and sunflower (though he suspects the sunflower, which botanists consider a New World plant, is a modern contaminant). The ingredients were bound together by clay in the tablets.

    Armed with Fleisher’s DNA results, Touwaide cross-referenced them with mentions of the plants in early Greek texts including the Hippocratic Collection—a series loosely attributed to Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine. Touwaide found that most of the tablets’ ingredients had been used to treat gastrointestinal disorders, which were common among sailors. Afflicted seafarers, Touwaide speculates, might have diluted the tablets in wine, vinegar or water to ingest them.

    This latest research will be added to the holdings of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions—a nonprofit organization founded by Touwaide and his wife and colleague, Emanuela Appetiti, a cultural anthropologist.

    “The knowledge to do what I’m doing is disappearing,” says Touwaide, surrounded by his 15,000 volumes of manuscripts and reference books, collectively named Historia Plantarum (“History of Plants”). With manuscripts deteriorating and fewer students learning ancient Greek and Latin, he feels a sense of urgency to extract as much information as possible from the ancient texts. He says they tell stories about the lives of ancient physicians and trade routes and contain even such esoterica as an ancient system for describing colors.


    In 2002, Alain Touwaide came across an article about the discovery, some years before, of a medical kit salvaged from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany. Divers had brought up a copper bleeding cup, a surgical hook, a mortar, vials and tin containers. Miraculously, inside one of the tins, still dry and intact, were several tablets, gray-green in color and about the size of a quarter.

    Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, recognized that the tablets were the only known samples of medicine preserved since antiquity. “I was going to do everything I could to get them,” he says.

    Touwaide, 57, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge. He is proficient in 12 languages, including ancient Greek, and he scours the globe searching for millennia-old medical manuscripts. Within their pages are detailed accounts and illustrations of remedies derived from plants and herbs.

    After 18 months of negotiations, Touwaide obtained two samples of the 2,000-year-old tablets from Italy’s Department of Antiquities. He then recruited Robert Fleischer, head geneticist at the Smithsonian’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics, to identify plant components in the pills. Fleischer was skeptical at first, figuring that the plants’ DNA was long degraded. “But once I saw plant fibers and little bits of ground-up plant material in close-up images of the tablets, I started to think maybe these really are well preserved,” he says.

    Over the past seven years, Fleischer has painstakingly extracted DNA from the samples and compared it with DNA in GenBank, a genetic database maintained by the National Institutes of Health. He has found traces of carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild onion, radish, yarrow, hibiscus and sunflower (though he suspects the sunflower, which botanists consider a New World plant, is a modern contaminant). The ingredients were bound together by clay in the tablets.

    Armed with Fleisher’s DNA results, Touwaide cross-referenced them with mentions of the plants in early Greek texts including the Hippocratic Collection—a series loosely attributed to Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine. Touwaide found that most of the tablets’ ingredients had been used to treat gastrointestinal disorders, which were common among sailors. Afflicted seafarers, Touwaide speculates, might have diluted the tablets in wine, vinegar or water to ingest them.

    This latest research will be added to the holdings of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions—a nonprofit organization founded by Touwaide and his wife and colleague, Emanuela Appetiti, a cultural anthropologist.

    “The knowledge to do what I’m doing is disappearing,” says Touwaide, surrounded by his 15,000 volumes of manuscripts and reference books, collectively named Historia Plantarum (“History of Plants”). With manuscripts deteriorating and fewer students learning ancient Greek and Latin, he feels a sense of urgency to extract as much information as possible from the ancient texts. He says they tell stories about the lives of ancient physicians and trade routes and contain even such esoterica as an ancient system for describing colors.

    “This is important work,” says Fleischer. “He is trying to tie all this together to get a broader picture of how people in ancient cultures healed themselves with plant products.”


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    Comments (11)

    it is indeed admirable work, sristi has been collecting such manuscripts and also pooling traditional knowledge along with contemporary grassroots innovations from rural india, china , and many other parts of the world through volunteers of honey bee network. we are very interested in getting detailed scientific reports for review in honey bee newsletter ( see sristi.org )

    excellent work, keep it up, congrats to all the team members

    anil

    Posted by anil gupta on June 5,2011 | 02:09 PM

    For Dr. George Santos: Source for the Illustration of plants and herbs photo:

    Thomas Hale, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden / Art Resource, NY

    Posted by Reader Services on May 5,2011 | 12:23 PM

    wow. i'm amazed that there are people who are into this kind of profession - preserving, studying, collecting ancient pieces of history! the younger generation, it seems to me, is putting so much emphasis on pop culture! but would be patient enough to dig history?

    geraldine
    http://redpenredtemper.info/

    Posted by geraldine on May 5,2011 | 09:45 AM

    It's wonderful to give attention to the exciting research of Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti, whom I've had the opportunity to hear in person. Their work has so many dimensions that it would be nice to see a longer series in Smithsonian!

    Posted by Claire Carlin on May 4,2011 | 04:50 PM

    This is a short message to thank all of you who took the time to send words of appreciation for our work and research, and also to reply the questions asked by three readers.
    - As per the caption of the botanical print, this is taken from Thomas Hale, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden / Art Resource, NY. If you search in the website of Art Resource, you will find many tables like this one and if you wish you can contact them directly. The NHM store doesn't have any of those on sale.

    - We have digitized many of these texts found in ancient manuscripts, and we are planning to publish them in the original language. However, we don't plan to translate them, at least for the moment. We have some samples already posted in the website of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, under "Collections", "Digital Texts".

    - Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our field of research is the ancient Mediterranean, therefore we work on Greek, Latin and Arabic texts. We don't work directly on Traditional Chinese Medicine, but you could get in touch with the chair of the Anthropology dept. at the NHM, or also with the dept. of History, Technology and Medicine, at the Museum of American History, where they also cover Traditional and Complementary Medicines. maybe, they will be able to help.

    Should you have further enquiries related to our research, please do contact us at: info@medicaltraditions.org

    Again, many thanks for your interest in our work and best wishes.

    Posted by Emanuela Appetiti Alain Touwaide Rob Fleischer on May 2,2011 | 08:34 PM

    May I please be informed of the sources of the photos in Ms. Gambino's article "Paging Dr. Hippocrates". One appears to be a botanical of a six plants Hippocrates used in his medical practice. I have contacted Smithsonian gift shop in the hope that it would be available as a print for purchase, but such is not the case. Thank you for your help. I tend the Massachusetts Medical Society medicinal garden (M.M.S.Hortus Medicus) hence my keen interest in the subject of medicinal plants especially those used in classical antiquity healing practices. Thank you for your help. George Santos

    Posted by George P. Santos, M.D. on April 27,2011 | 03:43 PM

    I want to know if they are going to publish the books that they translate. I would LOVE to see them published in their complete format. and I guarantee I would buy them no matter how much or how many of them there are.

    Posted by Dawn Maurer on April 21,2011 | 02:53 PM

    This fantastic work by Dr. Alain Touwaide and his colleagues (Dr. Emanuela Apetiti and Dr. Robert Fleisher) deserves special recognition by the Museum. For example, the alcove contining their exhibits can be dedicated to them in honor of their contributions.

    Posted by Dr. Sajjad H. Durrani on April 20,2011 | 12:18 PM

    I am in awe of the dedication to and excellent quality of the research by Touwaide and Appetiti.
    Thank you for the article.
    I follow their research but sadly it isn't on Facebook. I realise there are problems with security but it's a shame all the same.

    Posted by Sally Sedwick on April 20,2011 | 06:33 AM

    Great activities! Great achievements!

    Posted by Farid Alakbarli on April 19,2011 | 12:10 AM

    Does the Smithsonian have any artifacts from Traditional Chinese Medicine?

    Posted by Showing on April 19,2011 | 05:30 PM

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