Dimitrios Pepagomenos

Demetrios Pepagomenos or Demetrius Pepagomenus (, 1200–1300 ) was a Byzantine Greek savant who resided in Constantinople. He became a physician, a veterinary physician, and a naturalist.

Biography

Court physician During the 13th century, Demetrios Pepagomenos became the court physician of Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos (r. 1259–1261) and was commissioned by the Byzantine emperor to compose a work on gout. In his Σύνταγμα περὶ τῆς ποδάγρας, Pepagomenos considered gout a diathesis caused by a defective elimination of excreta.

Veterinary physician As a veterinary physician, Demetrios Pepagomenos wrote a treatise on feeding and nursing hawks (specifically gyrfalcon ) entitled Περὶ τῆς τῶν ἰεράκων ἀνατροφῆς τε καἰ θεραπεὶας. They were also published in Paris in 1558.

In Mazaris Demetrios Pepagomenos is lampooned in a 15th-century satire, Mazaris' Journey to Hades, as a doctor who poisoned himself. Mazaris says he had two sons: the older, Saromates ("Lizard Eyes"), also a doctor, and Theodosios the Little Stinker, a social climber. When Emperor Manuel II Palaeologos (r. 1391–1425) visited the Morea in 1415, Pepagomenos was a doctor in his retinue. He was left at Mystras to serve as court doctor to Theodore II Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea (r. 1407–1443). In that capacity, he attended the childbed of Cleofe Malatesta Palaiogina in 1433. At her subsequent death, he delivered a funeral oration.

Pepagomenos may have been the copyist of the medical manuscript Paris gr. 2256. He was the recipient of letters from John Eugenikos, and a correspondent of Cardinal Bessarion.