Neuropathic pain is supposed to be a post-renaissance described medical entity. Although it is often believed that John Fothergill (1712-1780) provided the first description of this condition in 1773, a review of the medieval Persian medical writings will show the fact that neuropathic pain was a medieval-originated concept. "Auojae Asab" [Nerve-originated Pain[ was used as a medical term in me...

Although the connection between head and stomach and hence the condition known as "gastric headache" was well known to the ancients, it has received little attention since the early 20th century. Herein, we review the teachings of the medieval Persian physicians about the gastric headache along with the related signs, symptoms, types and causes. The medieval Persian scholars adopted the main id...

Medieval analyses of molecular propositions include many non-truthfunctional connectives in addition to the standard modern binary connectives (conjunction, disjunction, and conditional). Two types of non-truthfunctional molecular propositions considered by a number of 13thand 14th-century authors are temporal and local propositions, which combine atomic propositions with ‘while’ and ‘where’. D...

The aim of the present paper has been to explore the medieval evidence on miraculous healings of paralysis and to confront it with modern medical knowledge. Paralysis has been selected as a model for such a study and St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) as a model of a saintly healer. Analyzed were the primary sources and modern literature. Paralysis was found to be among the most frequent disea...

Popular texts typically assert that guilds of craftsmen `̀ monopolized’ ’ markets in medieval England. Norman Cantor’s Medieval Reader declares `̀ craft guilds’ . . . main purpose and activity was narrow regulation of industrial productivity in order to restrain competition’ ’ (Cantor 1994, p. 278). Douglass North’s Structure and Change in Economic History asserts `̀ . . . guilds organized to prot...

The treatment of medieval texts is a particular challenge for parsers. I compare how two dependency parsers, one graph-based, the other transition-based, perform on Old French, facing some typical problems of medieval texts: graphical variation, relatively free word order, and syntactic variation of several parameters over a diachronic period of about 300 years. Both parsers were trained and ev...

This article argues that balm, or balsam, was, by the late medieval period, believed to be a panacea, capable of healing wounds and illnesses, and also preventing putrefaction. Natural history and pharmacological texts on balm from the ancient and late antique periods emphasized specific qualities of balm, especially its heat; these were condensed and repeated in medieval encyclopedias. The rar...

huntington's disease (hd) is thought to be due to genetically-programmed degeneration of neurons in certain areas of the brain. this degeneration causes uncontrolled movements, loss of intellectual faculties, and emotional disturbances. it is along time since the disease started tormenting human beings, and to date, conventional medications have failed to slow down the progression of hd. althou...

love and its transformative power have long been at the center of islamic sufism. for sufi writers profane love, perceived as the love of worldly beloved, was the first step on the path toward the union with the divine. farid al-din ‘attar (1145-1221) was one of the most significant authors to espouse and articulate profane love as a representation of both earthly and heavenly love. 'attar’s us...