A cabinet of ancient medical curiosities: strange tales and surprising facts from the healing arts of Greece and Rome

289 Pages·2017·20.345 MB·English

by  J. C. McKeown

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STRANGE TALES
AND
SURPRISING FACTS
FROM THE
HEALING ARTS OF GREECE AND ROME
J.C. McKeown
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: McKeown, J. C.
Title: A cabinet of ancient medical curiosities : strange tales and
surprising facts from the healing arts of Greece and Rome / J.C. McKeown.
Description: Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016010809 (hardback) | LCCN 2016012218 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190610432 | ISBN 9780190610449 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Medicine, Greek and Roman. | Medicine, Ancient.
Classification: LCC R138 .M394 2017 (print) | LCC R138 (ebook) |
DDC 610.938—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010809
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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In gratitude to the doctors and nurses who saved my life one summer’s day
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
cHaPTer i Medicine, Religion, and Magic 1
cHaPTer ii The Doctor in Society 19
cHaPTer iii Attitudes to Doctors 37
cHaPTer iV Some Famous Doctors 57
cHaPTer V Anatomy 71
cHaPTer Vi Sex Matters 83
cHaPTer Vii Women and Children 93
cHaPTer Viii Preventive Medicine 113
cHaPTer ix Prognosis and Diagnosis 133
cHaPTer x Particular Ailments and Conditions 143
cHaPTer xi Treatment and Cures I 175
cHaPTer xii Treatment and Cures II 197
cHaPTer xiii General Medicine 229
cHaPTer xiV Respice Finem 249
Glossary 253
coin imaGes 265
illusTraTion crediTs 267
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PREFACE
The Hippocratic treatise On the Nature of Man begins by declar-
ing, “Anyone who is accustomed to listening to discussions of
the nature of man in a broader context, and not just in its relation
specifically to medicine, will find nothing to interest him in this work
of mine.” By contrast, the main emphasis in this book is on the wider
aspects of life in antiquity as preserved for us in the medical texts,
rather than on medicine itself. Here you may expect to find vignettes
of doctors wrangling at the sickbed and impressing large audiences
with their surgical skills; cures for migraine such as wrapping an elec-
tric fish or a woman’s brassiere or a bandage containing mouse drop-
pings round the patient’s head (headaches, and also baldness, can be
prevented by having one’s hair cut on the seventeenth or the twenty-
ninth day after the new moon); donkeys in the sickroom to ensure a
fresh supply of milk; a great profusion of amulets, such as a strangled
viper to ward off tonsillitis or a cuckoo in a hareskin pouch to induce
sleep; and famous old jokes on the order of “A man went to a doctor
and said, ‘Doctor, I feel dizzy for half an hour when I wake up, and
then I feel fine.’ To which the doctor replied, ‘Well then, wake up half
an hour later!’ ”
There is no way to mitigate the absurdity of countless assertions
about medicine made in antiquity. To take just a few random exam-
ples, we can only wonder at such statements as:
Medicines become useless if they happen to be placed on a table before they
are administered.
Puberty can be retarded by smearing bat’s blood on young girls’ breasts
and young boys’ testicles.
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