[3] It is thought that the iatrosophia genre arose in Byzantine hospitals, as compendia of recipes and therapeutic advice.
After the fall of Byzantium, the iatrosophist tradition was maintained by Greek Orthodox monasteries and in secular, Greek-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire into the early twentieth century.
The texts drew on earlier Greek and Latin medical writing by Hippocratic writers such as Dioscorides and Galen, and, more importantly, later Byzantine authors (writing around the fourth to seventh centuries CE) such as Oribasius, Aetios of Amida, Alexander of Tralles and Paulus Aegineta.
Yet it is also clear that writers in this genre continually updated and adapted their texts on the basis of new information and experience.
Some researchers have even argued that some of the recipes in iatrosophia texts reflect clinically effective pharmacology.