title: Armenian medicine and diseases of the kidney.
abstract: The history of Armenian medicine is that of the common practice of medicine in caring for the sick through the ages, using mainly local medicinal herbs and natural products. Over the years, its practitioners persistently collected and recorded an expanding body of information on therapeutics and put it to use for the daily medical care of ordinary folks. Armenian medicine developed around the church and monasteries, which flourished during episodic periods of peace in an otherwise tumultuous and warring region. However, unlike the monastic medicine that developed in Europe, Armenian medicine maintained the rationality it had acquired from Greek medicine, and never resorted to magic, myth or amulets. Nor did it acquire or import saints. Armenian medicine is a classic example of the evolving art of therapeutics, whose record is preserved in extant manuscripts, saved over the centuries in monasteries, and now preserved in accessible collections.
authors.affiliation: Renal Section, Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. geknoyan@bcm.edu
authors.forename: Garabed
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Eknoyan
mesh_terms: D001136:Armenia; D002835:Christianity / Q000266:history; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000266:history*; D008374:Manuscripts, Medical as Topic / Q000266:history; D008419:Materia Medica / Q000266:history; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D009398:Nephrology / Q000266:history; D012068:Religion and Medicine
chemical_list: D008419:Materia Medica