Thanks to the efforts of Professor Armelle Debru of the University of Paris and Henry Ferreira-Lopes, of the Academic Library of Medicine, Paris, an on-line bibliography of Ancient Medicine, to be known as the Ancient Medicine Newsletter (AMN), is now available at http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/amn. The aim of this website is to bring conveniently and quickly to scholarly attention recent bibliography (articles, books, chapters, reviews) and other items of interest on Ancient Medicine, such as notices/news of conferences, personalia, job listings, etc.

The success of AMN depends on authors themselves supplying information on such of their work as they wish brought to international attention. For each item they wish to post on the AMN authors should send to Monsieur Ferreira-Lopes the usual publication information and a two or three sentence summary of contents. Here is an example:

Bliquez, Lawrence J., The Surgical Instrumentarium of Leon Iatrosphistes, Medicina nei Secoli, 11/2 (1999) 291-322. The object of this paper is to ascertain what kinds of surgical instruments were available to the Byzantines, especially in the Middle Byzantine Period. The principle source used is the Synopsis tes Iatrikes of the 9th century figure, Leon. Among the conclusions reached is that the surgical art did not decline as the Byzantine Empire advanced in time.

Authors writing in languages other than English are welcome to submit their summaries in those languages. The only consideration here is that the language used be one that is familiar to scholars and one that employs the Latin alphabet (German, French, Italian, Spanish).

Monsieur Ferreira-Lopes requests that anything sent to him be sent as an attached file. Presently the categories to be covered in AMN are Greek Medicine, Roman Medicine, Egyptian Medicine, Papyrology, and Medieval Medicine but the categories are surely to be expanded. I doubt that anything the SAM Review covered would be excluded from AMN.

Any member of SAM doing serious and original scholarship should contribute to this venture. Colleagues in other countries are also being encouraged to contribute by Monsieur Ferreira-Lopes. So we have in AMN an opportunity to restore the kind of communication the SAM Review used to provide.

Professor Debru and Monsieur Ferreira-Lopes also wish to produce an electronic directory of scholars who are interested in the field. If you have no objection to your name and the name and address of your academic institution being posted on the website could you please e-mail them to Monsieur Ferreira-Lopes.