Literary Devices in a Byzantine Medical Treatise (with Reference to On Energies and Mental Illnesses of Psychic Pneuma by Johannes Actuarios)

The Byzantines actively used techniques of rhetorical skill developed by ancient authors in various literary genres, including medical treatises. This article presents the results of a study of rhetorical techniques used in medical texts. The author examines On Energies and Mental Illnesses of Psychic Pneuma, a work by Johannes Actuarios, a fourteenth-century Byzantine physician. The treatise is devoted to the diseases of pneuma — one of the important elements of the human structure from the point of view of the ancient Greeks and Byzantines. The article examines the internal structure of the essay, the lexical particularities of the text, and various literary techniques used by the author. Such methods include numerous citations and comparisons. The results of the study prove that literary techniques had an important functional significance: they were used as evidentiary arguments of the Byzantine doctor. The treatise clearly illustrates that the lexical features and figurative means encountered indicate a good education of the author and a high level of the target audience. During the study, it is also noted that most of the techniques, proof, and lexical features were borrowed by the author from ancient texts, reinterpreted and introduced into a new semantic field as a confirmation of his point of view. The totality of observations makes it possible to speak about the existence of a scientific discourse adopted in the Byzantine intellectual community, of which Johannes Actuarios was a prominent representative, and these features are regarded as structural elements of scientific discourse.