Useless for Ignoramuses

Amirdovlat Amasiatsi is a world-famous Armenian encyclopedic scholar and physician; his glory is comparable to that of Hippocrates and Avicenna. He was educated in Constantinople with the most experienced doctors for his time, who gave him the title of Master of Medicine.

Amirdovlat’s main work for my purposes is the one entitled ‘Useless for Ignoramuses’, originally written between 1478-1492. Amirdovlat chose to write not in old Classical Armenian but in what is called Middle Armenian, since he wanted to use his work as a text to teach people, and ‘not everyone can read the ancient language’ as he himself put it (Vardanyan 1999:39).  One very useful aspect of his book is that it lists plants according to different names, so the same plant can appear in several places in his alphabetical listing, with names derived from Arabic, Persian and elsewhere, which can be very useful if you are looking for particular plants with diverse names.

Here, in Bulgaria (in Plovdiv), Amassiacs begins to write his masterpiece, his fundamental scientific work Useless for Ignoramuses". After four years of hard work, the book is finally finished. It is an invaluable encyclopaedic handbook summarizing the experience and traditions not only of Armenian but also of all Medieval medicine (about 1000 herbs, 250 natural preparations and more than 50 minerals).