MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W2124944507 · doi:10.1017/s0041977x03000119

The balsam of Matariyya: an exploration of a medieval panacea

2003· article· en· W2124944507 on OpenAlexaff
Marcus Milwright

Bibliographic record

VenueBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · 2003
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicPharmacological Effects of Medicinal Plants
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Victoria
Fundersnot available
KeywordsBalsamContext (archaeology)ArabicPanacea (medicine)Traditional medicineAncient historyHistoryArchaeologyMedicineAlternative medicineHorticulturePhilosophyBiology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The products derived from the balsam tree (probably a cultivar of Commiphora opobalsamum [L.] Engl.) were employed extensively in medicine during the medieval period. This article presents a preliminary survey of the Arabic and European texts which discuss the varied medical uses of balsam. The analysis of the medical applications of balsam is organized into broad categories according to groups of illnesses and treatments. Although other sources of medicinal oleo-resin were available in the medieval period, the balsam gathered from the trees in the walled plantation at Matariyya in Egypt enjoyed a pre-eminent status. It is argued that the great regard shown to balsam in medieval medicine must be seen in the wider context of the history and legends associated with Matariyya and the earlier plantations in Palestine.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.012

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0040.004
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.050
GPT teacher head0.325
Teacher spread0.275 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations17
Published2003
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueBulletin of the School of Oriental and African StudiesSame topicPharmacological Effects of Medicinal PlantsFrench-language works237,207