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Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome
An overview of Greek and Roman medicine: temple healing, Hippocratic observation, humoral theory, Galen, army surgeons, drugs and the limits of ancient treatment.
Greece, Rome and Europe
Ancient Medicine
Healers, doctors and medical ideas from Mesopotamia to Rome.
Asclepius and the Healing Temples
How sick Greeks and Romans visited Asclepian sanctuaries such as Epidaurus, what incubation and dream healing involved, and how the cult related to physicians.
Galen of Pergamon and Roman Anatomy
How Galen of Pergamon studied anatomy mainly through animal dissection, what he got right and wrong, and why his writings shaped medicine for over a thousand years.
Healers and Exorcists in Mesopotamia
How Mesopotamian medicine combined practical treatment with ritual, and how the asu physician and the ashipu exorcist differed in methods, texts and training.
Herbal Remedies and Ancient Pharmacology
Which plants, minerals and animal products ancient healers used, how drug knowledge was recorded in texts from Egypt to Rome, and what we can and cannot say about effects.
Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Corpus
What is known about Hippocrates of Kos and what the Hippocratic Corpus actually says about observation, diagnosis, prognosis and medical ethics, including the Oath.
Roman Army Surgeons and Military Hospitals
The medical care given to Roman soldiers: field treatment, army medici and surgeons, fort hospitals called valetudinaria, instruments, and what evidence survives.
The Four Humours Theory
How the Greek idea of four balanced bodily fluids, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, framed explanations of illness in Greek and Roman medicine and why it lasted.
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