Philosophers at Dinner belongs to the literary tradition inspired by the use of the Greek banquet. Banqueters playing Kottabos while a musician plays the Aulos
David Waines tells us that the written origins of connecting edible plants with "the systematic control of food and drink in order to conserve health or combat disease." in written records can be traced back to the Hippocratic Corpus, written chiefly between 430 and 330 BC.
The Hippocratic Corpus or Hippocratic Collection, is a collection of about 60 early Ancient Greek medical works traditionally associated with the physician Hippocrates & his teachings. The Hippocratic Corpus covers many diverse aspects of medicine, from Hippocrates' medical theories to what he devised to be ethical means of medical practice, to addressing various illnesses. Even though it is considered as a singular corpus representing Hippocratic medicine, they vary (sometimes significantly) in content, age, style, methods, & views practiced; therefore, true authorship is largely unknown. Hippocrates began Western society's development of medicine, through a delicate blending of the art of healing & scientific observations. Hippocrates shared not only how to identify symptoms of disease & proper diagnostic practices, but more essentially, he was alluding to his own form of art, "The art of true living & the art of fine medicine combined." The Hippocratic Corpus became the foundation upon which Western medical practice was built.
"Galen of Pergamum (129 to c. 200/216), the successor to the Hippocratic Corpus, is a fundamental source for information on food & diet in the classical world. In today's printed edition of his writings, the effect of food on health is noted in several hundred pages. His formulation of what constituted a healthy life survived to the threshold of the modern period. Apart from the Hippocratic Corpus, Galen's chief sources on dietetics were authors writing around the year 300 BC.
"During the 6C & 7C, there appears to have been a decline in the influence of the Greek medical tradition as the Eastern Mediterranean world underwent profound changes as the religious culture of Islam emerged and expanded.
"Arabic medical writing started in the early 8C during the creative & dynamic formative period of the Islamic community. Many Greek medical works including the Hippocratic Corpus & those of Galen were translated into Arabic.
"A translation movement with its center in Baghdad, the dynastic capital of the 'Abbasid Caliphs, introduced to an Arabic reading audience the medical works of the Hippocratic Corpus and those of Galen. In fact, many works of lesser ranking figures such as Rufus of Ephesus, active at the end of the 1C AD, survive only in Arabic translation.
"The earliest extant culinary manual, Kitdb al-tabi-kh, compiled by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq (of whom nothing is otherwise known) belongs to the late 10C although it contains evidence of a high culinary culture dating from the early 9C.
"Al-Warraq’s compilation like other culinary manuals, reflected a close awareness of contemporary medical views on dietetics. Several of the opening chapters deal with subjects reflecting the influence of the Greek dietetic tradition. In a later collection of recipes, dating from 13C &14C Egypt, such information is diffused throughout the book, where comments on the benefits of a particular dish are often included along with the recipe itself.
"‘Abd al-Malik b. Habib (d. 853). Born in al-Andalus, he practiced as a jurist in Cordoba following a three-year sojourn in Egypt & Mecca where, among his other activities, he gathered material for a medical compendium in which he dealt with the cure of illness & the preservation of health chiefly by means of food & diet.
"All of this illustrates a dialogue between medical professionals & laymen in medieval Islamic culture, each group to some extent informing & being informed by the other. The culinary manuals provide a clue to the nature of this relationship. They point to the central place of the domestic household in the life of the leisured urban class in Islamic societies, where not only proper nourishment could be provided to its members but also remedies for minor ailments or disorders which did not initially, at least, require the physician’s expert knowledge of drugs to combat more serious disorders."
