Physician versus physician

This chapter provides two case studies. They focuses on the Meletios's and Leo's statements on the human head and brain, the starting point of a capite ad calcemaccount, in order to draw preliminary conclusions on the exact relationship between the two texts and their interaction with their respective audiences. The chapter shows that, although both authors built on the same immense scientific, literary, philosophical and theological tradition, they also challenged it in creating their works in such a way as to meet the expectations of their readers. Moreover, to return to the cranial sutures, Leo skips Meletios's inaccurate statement about the remaining sutures in the pointed skull. Physicians in Late Antiquity and Byzantium described the human skull and its sutures in the tradition of Hippocrates and Galen. Taking all the evidence from the case studies on Meletios's On the Constitution of Man and its "excerpting relative", Leo's Epitome on the Nature of Men, that have been discussed.