Description

Oil Dedicated to St Cosmas and Damian (Patron for Barbers)

St Cosmas and Damian (Arabic: قُزما ودميان, romanized: Qozma wa Demyaan; Greek: Κοσμᾶς καὶ Δαμιανός; Latin: Cosmas et Damianus; c.  3rd century – c.  287 or 303) two Arab physicians in the town Cyrrhus, and reputedly twin brothers, and early Christian martyrs. They practised their profession in the seaport of Aegeae, then in the Roman province of Syria.

Cosmas and Damian third century Arabian-born twin brothers who embraced Christianity and practised medicine and surgery without a fee. This led them to being named anargyroi (from the Greek Ἀνάργυροι, ‘the silverless’ or ‘unmercenaries’); by this, they attracted many to the Christian faith. They reputedly cured blindness, fever, paralysis and reportedly expelled a breast serpent. They arrested by Lysias, governor of Cilicia (modern day Çukurova, Turkey) during the Diocletian persecution because of their faith and fame as healers. Emperor Diocletian a religious fanatic and favoured the pantheism of the Olympian Gods. He issued a series of edicts that condemned the Christians in his attempt to wipe out Christianity from his empire.

Nothing known of their lives except that they suffered martyrdom in Syria during the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian. According to Christian traditions, the twin brothers born in Arabia and became skilled doctors.

Saladino d’Ascoli, a 15th century Italian physician, claims that the medieval electuary, a pasty mass consisting of a drug mixed with sugar and water or honey suitable for oral administration, known as opopira, a complex compound medicine used to treat diverse maladies including paralysis, was invented by Cosmas and Damian.