Abstract
When talking about medicine today, we usually mean “Western,” scientifically based medicine aided by technology, in short, conventional or school-medicine as traditionally practiced by physicians in universities, hospitals and medical practices in much of the world. Our consensus is well deserved, since it is this medicine which has revolutionized the fate of mankind through the control of infectious diseases, advances in microbiology, genetics, micro-and Robosurgery, pre-and neonatal care — essentially through progress in all those areas of life we care most deeply about: birth, sex and death.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to Present. London/New York: Norton, 1997, 1–8 and passim.
Scibonius Largo, Compositiones 17, ed. Sergio Sconoccha, Leipzig 1983, 20.
Scarborough, John, “Roman Medicine to Galen,” in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37: 1. Ed. Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993, 3–48, quote 20.
Porter, 689.
See below Laqueur, Nettesheim, Sastry, Willich.
Jackson, R.P.J., “Roman Medicine: The Practitioners and their Practices,” in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37: 1. Ed. Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993, 79–101.
Riddle, John M., “High Medicine and Low Medicine in the Roman Empire,” in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37: 1. Ed. Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993, 102–120.
Barnes, Jonathan, “Medicine, Experience and Logic,” in: Science and Speculation. Studies in Hellenic Theory and Practice. Ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Jacques Brunschwig, Myles Burnyeat, Malcolm Schofield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 24–68.
Frede, Michael, “The Method of the so-called Methodical School of Medicine,” in: Science and Speculation. Studies in Hellenic Theory and Practice. Ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Jacques Brunschwig, Myles Burnyeat, Malcolm Schofield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 1–23.
Nutton, Vivian, “Healers in the Medical Market Place: towards a Social History of Graeco-Roman Medicine,” in: Medicine in Society. Historical Essays. Ed. by Andrew Wear. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 15–58.
Temkin, Oswei, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
King, Helen, Hippocrates’ Women. Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge, 1998, esp. 4–10.
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., The Revolutions of Wisdom. Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science. Sather Classical Lectures 52. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R., Magic, Reason and Experience. Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Nutton, Vivian, “Roman Medicine: Tradition, Confrontation, Assimilation,” in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 37: 1. Ed. Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993, 49–78.
Pearce, Tola Olu, “ Lay Medical Knowledge in an African Context,” in: Knowledge, Power, and Practice. The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Ed. by Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care 36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 150–165.
Tambiah, Stanley J., Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Diederich, Werner, “Holismus versus Realismus? Wissenschaftsphilosophische Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis östlicher und westlicher Medizin,” in: Wissenschaftstheorien in der Medizin. Ein Symposium. Ed. W. Depert, H. Kliemt, B. Lohff, J. Schaefer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992, 137–156.
Good, Byron J. and Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio, “Learning Medicine”: The Construction of Medical Knowledge at Harvard Medical School,“ in: Knowledge, Power, and Practice. The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Ed. by Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care 36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 81–107.
Porter, passim, 245–303, and 389–396 on homeopathy an chiropractic in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam, 1994.
Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens. Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1999.
Knorr Cetina, Karin, Epistemic Cultures. How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of a Scientific Revolutions. Chicago7: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Patients have of course frequently been well informed and vocal, but rarely in these numbers, Porter 281–287 (re. the eighteenth century), 396 for an early backlash in nineteenth-century medicine.
Oz, Mehmet, Healing from the Heart. New York: Penguin/Dutton, 1998.
For a detailed analysis of the historical aspects of the following see Elm, Susanna, Sons of Hellenism and Fathers of the Church: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Model Bishop and the Conversion of the Late Antique Elites, forthcoming.
Unschuld, Paul U., Medicine in China: A History of Ideas Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, esp. 3–14.
Lewis, Gilbert, “Double Standards of Treatment Evaluation,” in: Knowledge, Power, and Practice. The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Ed. by Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care 36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 189–218.
The precise sequence of events following Constantine’s actions after 312 has often been described. For a vivid and readable account see Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
A readable account for this and the early periods is Lane Fox, Robin, Pagans and Christians. New York: Knopf, 1987.
Medicine and Western Civilization. Ed. by David J. Rothman, Steven Marcus, and Stephanie A. Kiceluk. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995, 139–205.
Kuriyama, Shigehisa, “Changing Concepts of Disease in East Asia,” in: The Cambridge World History of Disease. Ed. by Kenneth F. Kiple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 52–59.
Kaptchuk, Ted J., The Web that has No Weaver. Understanding Chinese Medicine. New York: Gordon and Weed, 1983.
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., Adversaries and Authorities. Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. Ideas in Context 42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Lock, Margaret M., East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Graf, Fritz, “Heiligtum und Ritual: Das Beispiel der griechisch-römischen Asklepeia.” In: Le Sanctuaire grec. Ed. by O. Reverdin and B. Grange. Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 37. Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1992, 152–199.
Horden, Peregrine. “Saints and Doctors in the Early Byzantine Empire: The Case of Theodore of Sykeon,” in: The Church and Healing. Ed. W. J. Sheils. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982, 1–13.
Lutterbach, Hubertus, “Der Christus medicus und die Sancti medici. Das wechselvolle Verhältnis zweier Grundmotive christlicher Frömmigkeit zwischen Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit,” Saeculum 47 (1996): 239–281.
Parmentier, M., “Incubatie in de Antieke Hagiografie,” in: De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het christendom. Ed. by A. Hilhorst. Nijmegen: Dekker & van de Vegt, 1988, 2740.
Perkins, Judith, The Suffering Self. Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge, 1995.
At issue here is in essence a shift in categories of inquiry based on definitions of the “scientific.” Historians of medicine, with exceptions, of course, such as Nutton, Lloyd etc., continue to rely on the dichotomies embodied by medicine itself, i.e. categories such as rational, scientific vs. primitive, supra - or infra -natural, as expressed in the following quote from James Longrigg, Greek Rational Medicine, London: Routledge, 1993, 3 and 4: “One of the most impressive contributions of the ancient Greeks to Western Culture was the invention of rational medicine (even though) irrational elements were not completely eradicated from Greek medicinal thinking….Then, as is indeed still the case at the present day, superstitious beliefs and irrational practices were rife in medicine…(and) were frequently unconsciously adapted even by doctors who were otherwise fiercely opposed to superstition and irrational practices.” Given that precisely these categories are at issue in the current debate regarding the relationship between scientific medicine and not yet science based complementary care, such approaches are unhelpful. Moreover, works especially in medical anthropology have demonstrated the degree to which categories such as “natural,” the “body,” “natural bodily functions,” even male and female, are culturally constructed.
King, Helen, Hippocrates’ Women. Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge, 1998.
Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Nutton, “Roman Medicine,” 56; Unschuld, 7.
Brown, Peter, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Elm, Susanna, “A Programmatic Life: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Orations 42 and 43 and the Constantinopolitan Elites,” Arethusa 33 (2000), 411–427.
Galen, Selected Works. Ed. by P.N. Singer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 33.
Plutarch, On Preserving One’s Health, 1.122c-e, in: Plutarch’s Moralia, Ed. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 2:216–218.
Elm, Susanna, “The Diagnostic Gaze: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Theory of Orthodox Priesthood in his Oration 6 ”De pace“ and 2 ”Apologia de Fuga sua,“ in: Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire = Orthodoxy, Christianity, History: travaux du groupe de recherches ” Définir, maintenir et remettre en cause l’orthodoxie dans l’histoire du christianisme “, ed. by S. Elm, É. Rebillard et A. Romano [Rome: École française de Rome, (Collection de l’École française de Rome) 2000 ].
Long, A. A., Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. Berkeley: University of California Presse, 1986.
Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire. Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Descartes, Meditations, Dis. on Method, 4: “I, that is to say the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body.” Both do form a unity, but the mind related to the body as a pilot to a vessel, they act in accord but are ontologically distinct.
Williams, Bernard, Descartes. The Project of Pure Inquiry. London: Penguin, 1978.
Martin, Dale B., The Corinthian Body. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 3–37.
Long, A. A., “Soul and Body in Stoicism.” Center for Hermeneutical Studies 36, Berkeley, 1980. Shaw, Teresa M., The Burden of the Flesh. Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998, 28–33.
According to Diogenes Laertius, the Stoics thought that the world consisted of “that which is acted upon and qualifies as substance (hole), and that which acts, that is the reason (logos) in it, namely God.” Lives of Philosophers 7.134.
Padel, Ruth, In and Out of the Mind. Greek Images of the Tragic Self Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, 42–86.
Staden, Heinrich von, “The Stoic Theory of Perception and its ”Platonic“ Critics.” In: Studies in Perception. Ed. by Peter K. Machaner and Robert G. Turnbull, Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1978, 96–136.
Meeks, Wayne A., The First Urban Christians. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
Meeks, Wayne A., The Moral World of the First Christians. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986.
For an illustrative example, see the beginning of the Gospel of John. It is a Greek philosophy inspired commentary on Genesis, i.e. on the creation of the cosmos and man’s place in it.
The processes described here are discussed in detail under headings such as the Trinitarian Debate, Apollinarianism, Monophysite and Origenist Controversies, etc.. Handbooks of doctrine and Church History provide overviews.
Logan, Michael H., “Humoral Medicine in Guatemala and Peasant Acceptance of Modern Medicine,” in: Health and the Human Condition. Perspectives on Medical Anthropology. Ed. by Michael H. Logan and Edward E. Hunt, Jr.. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1978, 363–375.
Said, Edward W., Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.
Descartes, Meditations, Dis. on Method, 4 and 5.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Elm, S. (2001). Developments in Ancient Medicine — Models for Today’s Challenges?. In: Willich, S.N., Elm, S. (eds) Medical Challenges for the New Millennium. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9708-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9708-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5685-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9708-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive