ohhh. we're learning to read abbreviations in academic texts! i don't mind telling you that i felt real panic seeing this packet when i had a look this afternoon, but i shall learn. katy park says she remembers being a grad student in her first year and staring at pages of a commentary like this and thinking, there is just no fucking way. but, she says, we will learn how, and we will thank her for it. if you do not learn how to read abbreviations - then a entire world of texts will be closed to you. she says that you can always tell which historians are not able to read this stuff because there's something missing in their world view - that however brilliant they are it is as though life begins for them only with the invention of roman type - and that it's all too easy for "i can't read this" to translate itself into "that is not worth reading" or "that is a different world, not what i need to know." so that to these historians of medicine a master narrative is always lacking - having defaulted on an entire era of texts.

p.s. try page 13 for a helpful key to some standard abbrievations.