On the meaning of Birsām and Sirsām: A survey of the Arabic commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms

© 2017 Peeters Publishers. All rights reserved. This is a preliminary study of the usage of the terms birsām and sirsām in the Arabic commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms. Some previous scholarship claimed that Arabic medical works used the two terms interchangeably or with lack of clarity. We can now maintain that this is not the case in the Arabic commentaries on the Aphorisms, where the two terms are given precise definitions, based on the affected part. These definitions vary slightly, but importantly, overtime. I profer a periodization for the usage of these two terms in the Arabic commentaries, which reflects these semantic changes.