"Combining, Mixing and Searching New Properties: Compound Medicines" - 13th-15th January 2011, Paris | STEP - Science and Technology in the European Periphery

Combining, Mixing and Searching New Properties: Compound Medicines

January 13th-15th 2011 – CNRS / Univ. Paris 7

Proposal

Over the past twenty years, the history of the medicines used in Mediterranean societies
from Classical Antiquity to the dawn of modern science has been increasingly studied.
Research shifted from a documentary interest at the edge of cultural history to a scientific
investigation. Characteristically enough, however, historical investigation has been
almost exclusively devoted to simple medicines, that is, medicines made mainly of one active
substance (with an excipient so as to make it possible to administer such substance).
Composed medicines, that is, medicines made of several active ingredients, which were much used
in the past, have rarely been approached. – apart from Theriac and Mithridatum-- because
of methodological challenges.

Compound medicines have been a major component of therapeutic systems from probably the
2nd century AD to a recent time. Included among the antidotes by Galen, they have
generated a whole stream of theoretical reflection on what a medicine is, what it can achieve, and
how it achieves what it does. The latter question took the form of a specific reflection
on the actual medical property/properties of compound medicines: did it correspond to the
sum of the properties of the components or was it a new one, resulting from the
interaction of all compounds?

Based on the recent work on simple medicines, a first approach of compound remedies
seems possible. Diet, including the composition of meals and their combination with simple or
compound medicines be it for healthy or sick individuals, is also a part of medicine
therapy. This is what the present proposal is about. It aims to bring around the table
specialists from different fields (in a cross-disciplinary perspective), not so much to offer
methods and solutions for the analysis of compound medicines, but rather to define the field,
to identify its specificity/specificities, to formulate the specific problem(s) it poses,
and hopefully to delineate lines of exploratory investigations. Also, it aims to survey
the expertises currently available worldwide and, consequently, to lay down the basis for a
possible future international network.

From a practical viewpoint, the workshop should bring together historians of ancient and
medieval medicine and specialists on simple medicines. The workshop will the first of a
long-term project that will associate historians of medicine, pharmacy, natural sciences,
and sciences specializing on medical theories (including physiology and pathogeny),
pharmaceutical techniques, natural resources and environment, and physics (in the ancient and
medieval meaning of the word); historians of philosophy interested in the problems of
matter/substance, transformation (generation and corruption), and interaction between different
matters/bodies; botanists and specialists of materia medica (actually, pharmacognosy);
organic chemists and pharmaco-chemists specializing in drug development and drug design; and
clinicians, possibly specialists of clinical trials of new drugs (phases II and III).

The proposal is of an exploratory nature and is expected to better circumscribe the
field, to inventory and formulate the questions it poses, to identify the specialties best
qualified to contribute to the study of the questions in a border-crossing perspective, to
formulate hypotheses and to design methods aimed to solve the questions specifically raised
by compound medicines, and possibly also to identify the laboratories currently in the
best position to approach the problem.

PROGRAMME

Jeudi 13 Janvier 2011

9h30
Accueil des participants

10h
Séance d’ouverture
Roshdi Rashed et Pascal Crozet (CNRS-SPHERE – CHSPAM , Univ. Paris 7 )

10h15
Présentation des journées sur « Mélanges et médicaments composés »
Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi (CNRS, SPHERE–CHSPAM, Univ. Paris 7) et Alain Touwaide (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC)

10h30
Les animaux dans la pharmacopée arabe médiévale,
à travers l’œuvre "La grande vie des animaux" de Damîrî.
Ahmed Aarab (Univ. Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tanger / Maroc)

11h15
Les Argiles, terres de soins et supports de principes actifs
Michel Rautureau (Univ. Orléans, CNRS), Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi, et Dr. J.C. Charrié

12h00 : Repas au restaurant de Paris 7

14h
Courte introduction sur la pharmacie médiévale latine après le XIIe siècle
Danielle Jacquart (EPHE, Paris)

14h30
Quando debeat addere, quando subtrahere : composition et action des médicaments composés dans le De uirtutivus et laudibus compositorum medicaminum de Gilles de Corbeil (fin XIIe siècle)
Mireille Ausecache (EPHE, Paris)

15h15
La place et la composition des remèdes dans la médecine chinoise
Florence Bretelle-Establet (CNRS, SPHERE–REHSEIS, Univ. Paris 7)

16h : Pause

16h15
Titre à préciser
Anne-Marie Moulin

16h45
Compound Medicines Between Historiographical Tradition and Skepticism / Les médicaments composes entre tradition historiographique et scepticisme
Alain Touwaide (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC)

Vendredi 14 janvier 2011

9h30
! Exceptionnellement pour cette seule conférence : salle Klee, 454A, 4e étage ! Présentation du projet ANR “Terminologie du vocabulaire philosophique et scientifique hébreu prémoderne”
Silvia Di Donato (CNRS, SPHERE–CHSPAM)

10h30
A new chemical approach of honey and bees. / Nouvelle approche du miel et des abeilles
Jean-Marc Bonmatin (CNRS, CBM Orléans)

11h30
Have your Cake and Eat : The Concept of Remedying Foods in Medieval Islam
Nawal NASRALLAH (Independent researcher and cooking instructor, Boston)

12h15 - Repas

14h
Interpénétration, sueur et scepticisme : sur le sens d’un argument plotinien à propos du mélange total stoïcien (Enn. II, 7 [37], ch. 1, l. 22-26)
Valérie Cordonnier (CNRS, SPHERE–CHSPAM , Paris 7)

14h45
Evaluer la force du médicament composé : L’exemple du Kitâb al-Musta`înî de l’andalousien Ibn Biklârish (XIe s.)
Joëlle Ricordel (CNRS, SPHERE–CHSPAM, Univ. Paris 7)

15h30
Adapter un médicament composé au patient ou le traitement du cas particulier : exemple de Hiéra chez Râzî (865 – 925) pour le traitement des maladies liées à la bile noire
Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi (CNRS, SPHERE–CHSPAM, Paris 7)

16h15
Usage de médicament composé Hiéra pour le traitement des maladies de femmes, dans le K. al-Hâwî
Mohammad SADR (Doctorant, EPHE, Paris)

Samedi 15 janvier 2011

10h
Galien et les médicaments composés, Réflexions et remarques
Armelle Debru (CNRS, Univ. Paris 5 et Paris 7)

10h45
La viti-viniculture dans le monde arabo-musulman médiéval, à partir de l’exemple andalou
François Clément (CRHIA, Univ. Nantes et CESCM, Univ. Poitiers)

11h30
Examen d’un traité d’Al-Razi (865 –925) sur les aliments. Exemple de l’alimentation par la viande : adapter leurs qualités et rectifier leurs méfaits.
Asma BenGhachem (Doctorante Univ. Paris 7 / CNRS SPHERE-CHSPAM)

12h15
Substitute Drugs in Early Islamic Pharmaceutics
Younes Karamati (PhD Candidate, Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran)

12h30
la Thériaque : Un antidote sous condition : Al-Djahiz et Râzî
Meyssa Bensaad (post-doctorante Univ. Paris 7 / CNRS SPHERE-CHSPAM, )

12h45 : Repas

Organisé par / Organized by

* Dr. Mehrnaz KATOUZIAN – SAFADI

katouzian.safadi@wanadoo.fr

CNRS - UMR 7219 / Université Paris 7

Bâtiment Condorcet

Université Paris-Diderot 75013

http://www.chspam.univ-paris-diderot.fr

* Dr. Alain TOUWAIDE

- TOUWAIDA@si.edu - atouwaide@hotmail.com