Soranus - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

SORANUS, Greek physician, born at Ephesus, lived during the reigns of Trojan and Hadrian (A.D. 98-138). According to Suidas, he practised in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome. He was the chief representative of the school of physicians known as "methodists." Two treatises by him are extant: On Fractures (in J. L. Ideler, Physici et medici minores, 1. 1841) and On Diseases of Women (first published in 1838, later by V. Rose, in 1882, with a 6th-century Latin translation by Moschio, a physician of the same school). Of his most important work (On Acute and Chronic Diseases) only a few fragments in Greek remain, but we possess a complete Latin translation by Caelius Aurelianus (5th century). The Life of Hippocrates (in Ideler) probably formed one of the collection of medical biographies by Soranus referred to by Suidas, and is valuable as the only authority for the life of the great physician, with the exception of articles in SuIdas and Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Kc'os). The Introduction to the Science of Medicine (V. Rose, Anecdota graeca, ii. 1870) is considered spurious.

See article by J. Hahn, in Dechambre's Dictionnaire encyclope'dique des sciences me'dicales, 3rd series, torn. 10; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898) J. Ilberg: Die Oberlieferung der Gynaekologie des Soranos von Ephesos (Leipzig, 1910).