An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

RIDDLE, John M.

4 entries
  • 8567

Dioscorides on pharmacy and medicine.

Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985.


Subjects: ANCIENT MEDICINE › Roman Empire › History of Medicine in the Roman Empire, BOTANY › History of Botany, PHARMACOLOGY › History of Pharmacology & Pharmaceuticals
  • 7043

Contraception and abortion from the ancient world to the Renaissance.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Riddle argued that the ancient world possessed effective and safe contraceptives and abortifacients; however this knowledge about fertility control, widely held in the ancient world, was gradually lost over the course of the Middle Ages, becoming nearly unavailable by the early modern period. The reasons for this, Riddle argued, was that this knowledge was passed down through the oral and folk tradition, mainly by midwives, and belonged to a distinctly female-centered culture, removed from the male dominated and orientated knowledge of professionally trained physicians.



Subjects: Contraception › History of Contraception, OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY › OBSTETRICS › Abortion, PHARMACOLOGY › History of Pharmacology & Pharmaceuticals, Renaissance Medicine › History of Renaissance Medicine, TRADITIONAL, Folk or Indigenous Medicine, WOMEN in Medicine & the Life Sciences, Publications About
  • 11942

Quid pro quo: Studies in the history of drugs.

Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1992.

"All too often ancient herbal and other remedies have been dismissed as ’simply’ folklore, of no relevance to medical science. John Riddle’s approach, however, has been to explore the history of drugs with the hypothesis that ancient and medieval medicines were effective - a methodology that he expounds in the final essay (hitherto unpublished). Indeed, he shows, both from detailed case-studies and from the comparison of the listings given by classical and medieval authorities with those in modern pharmacopoeias, that our ancestors had discovered and made effective use of many of the drugs used in medicine today, from antiseptics and analgesics to oral contraceptives, even chemotherapy for cancer. There is the suggestion, therefore, that more careful examination and identification of the drugs used in the past may reveal chemicals that can be exploited anew. Central to these studies is the investigation of how a drug was used and how knowledge about it was transmitted - and perhaps also distorted in the process - from the Classical world through the Middle Ages" (publisher).



Subjects: MEDIEVAL MEDICINE › History of Medieval Medicine, PHARMACOLOGY › History of Pharmacology & Pharmaceuticals, PHARMACOLOGY › PHARMACEUTICALS › Materia medica / Herbals / Herbal Medicines › History of Materia Medica
  • 7722

Eve's herbs: A history of contraception and abortion in the West.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

A history of the use of plant products, such as ergot, as abortion agents.



Subjects: Contraception › History of Contraception, OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY › OBSTETRICS › Abortion