This talk focuses on edited and unedited examples of Byzantine hospital recipe books, the so-called xenōnika. I would like to show that the surviving texts represent only one aspect of Byzantine hospital practice, that is mainly pharmacology and to a lesser degree dietetics and non-invasive surgery. The recipes concerned are brief and clear in order to be used in everyday practice. They do not include any lengthy theoretical details, since these are not helpful for urgent matters when dealing with emergency situations in hospitals. The absence of details about medical theory in these collections should not be taken to confirm that practising Byzantine physicians in hospitals were not educated enough. Lastly, as far as pharmacology is concerned, it is argued that the recipe books clearly embrace the main medical and pharmacological trends of the period, including the introduction of new and perhaps more active ingredients in their recipes for drugs.