Soranus of Ephesus

Soranus (Greek: Σωρανός; fl. 1st/2nd century AD) was a Greek physician from Ephesus. He practiced in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome, and was one of the chief representatives of the Methodic school of medicine. Several of his writings still survive, most notably his four-volume treatise on gynaecology, and a Latin translation of his On Acute and Chronic Diseases.

Little is known about the life of Soranus. According to the Suda (which has two entries on him) he was a native of Ephesus, was the son of Menander and Phoebe, and practised medicine at Alexandria and Rome in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian (98–138). He lived at least as early as Archigenes, who used one of his medicines; he was tutor to Statilius Attalus of Heraclea; and he was dead when Galen wrote his work De Methodo Medendi, c. 178.

He belonged to the Methodic school, and was one of the most eminent physicians of that school. Little else is known about his life, except that he passed some time in Aquitania for the purpose of treating some skin diseases which were very prevalent there at the time.

His treatise Gynaecology is extant (first printed in 1838, later by V. Rose, in 1882, with a 6th-century Latin translation by one Muscio). Also extant are parts of treatises On Signs of Fractures and On Bandages. Of his most important work (On Acute and Chronic Diseases) only a few fragments in Greek remain, but there exists a complete Latin translation by Caelius Aurelianus (5th century). The Life of Hippocrates probably formed one of the collection of medical biographies by Soranus referred to in the Suda, and is valuable as the only authority for the life of the great physician, with the exception of articles in the Suda and in Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Κώς). The Introduction to the Science of Medicine is considered spurious.

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