Biology and medicine
Biology and medicine is a huge area. I am treating them
together because there is a very close link between all the life sciences
in the ancient sources.
1 The Greeks were never in any doubt that humans are a type of animal, and not some special separate kingdom of life on earth. Aristotle's famous dictum "man is an animal meant to live in a polis",2 Arion's dolphin,
3 Herodotos' werewolves (4.105), people turned by gods into animals and plants,
4 Aesop's fables, Medusa, the centaur, minotaur, siren, and other half-human and half-animal creatures, all reveal the depth of the perceived affinity between humans and other species of life on earth. In the field of medicine, ideas about human anatomy were based to a significant extent on
animal anatomy.5 People and animals could be observed to suffer from the same epidemic disease,
6 and the same cure for X could be offered as treatment for people or animals.
7 [Aristotle] Physiognomics is a politically very incorrect comparison of physical features of people with those of different animals, and likens such appearances to corresponding personal characteristics. Poseidonios debated ethics and the emotions with his fellow-Stoic Chrysippus using children and animals as examples,
8 and Plutarch and others argued for the rationality of animals.
9 Aristotle said that "nature passes from lifeless objects to animals in such unbroken sequence, interposing between them beings which live and yet are not animals, that scarcely any difference seems to exist between two neighbouring groups owing to their close proximity".
10 The Peripatetic On plants opens with a discussion about whether or not plants have souls and
senses.11 But while man was seen as an animal, the anthropocentric element in ancient biological work is paramount. The ancient scientists used man as the measure of all things. Even when they were not explicitly concerned with the utility of particular animals and plants to people, the vast majority of their basic data about animals and plants had been obtained from people who utilized those animals or plants.
The difficulties of undertaking any study of ancient biological works should not be underestimated
12 How much ancient material exists on zoology is indicated by, for example, two recent studies of what is generally an unpopular category, insects
13 (about which Aristotle, the main exponent of ancient zoology, was relatively little interested).
14 These studies were researched independently but published almost simultaneously, and they deal, for the most part, with different material and take quite different approaches.
15 Insects also feature in studies of ancient toxicology
16 which examine the surviving scientific texts associated with the art of the poisoner, and those who sought to thwart him or her. Aristotle's biological works have received a lot of attention over the last generation, though thisattention has a stronger philosophical bent than a zoological focus as such, and they have not apparently been studied for what light they can shed on social and economic history. There are other ancient works related to zoology, besides Aristoteleans, which may not be as good qua science, but which do not deserve to be completely ignored in Aristotle's favour. Moreover, as representatives of other ancient times and places, they are fascinating sources for the theories, and the histories, of their times. Plants have been studied more for their relation to medicine (pharmacology) than in their own right, and so here I will highlight some of the workft,he father of botany, Theophrastos.
17 Medical history is thriving,
18 as many texts survive and many scholars are interested in their contents, and one is spoilt for choice of topic. Veterinary medicine, by contrast, is only just beginning to receive any attention at all.
Given the range of ancient work in the biological area and the consequent danger of drowning in a sea of disconnected details, I am going to focus on one theme for the zoological material. That theme is marine life, and most of my examples of ancient views about animals (and to a lesser extent plants) will concern those to be found in the sea. I have chosen this area for examples because it is clearly defined, and because it shows ancient scientists going out of their way to gather data Ð sea life cannot be observed from casual observation out of one's portico.19 As Aristotle observed ample data may be collected concerning all the various kinds [of plants and animals], if only we are willing to take sufficient pains.20
Besides, Greek society was a maritime society as well
as an agricultural society, and these sources shed fascinating light on
the Greeks' history, as well as their science. Medicine will be treated more
broadly, to give an overview of this field.
Aristotle spent a great deal of his time and effort on zoology. He wrote five works with animals in the title, of which History of animals (HA), Parts of animals and Generation of animals are major works, and Movement of animals and Progression of animals are minor. He also wrote a number of other major and minor works relevant to zoology, of which nine survive: on the Soul; Senses; Memory; Sleep; Dreams; Prophesy in sleep; Length of life; Youth, old age, life and death (one work); and Respiration. The HA is the largest and most studied of these works. Earlier generations of scholars assumed either that the HA was a not-very-well-organised set of notes, or that Aristotle was attempting to produce a taxonomy, a hierarchical classification, of the animal kingdom, not very successfully.
Balme got to work on the problem in the 1960s, and laid the foundations of the dominant current opinion, that Aristotle was rather attempting something more preliminary: to identify things in the bodies of animals Ð specifically, things which some animals have and others do not, such as a womb Ð which he could then use as an analytical tool to group and ultimately to understand animals.21
His aim was then to explain those differences (and similarities), to be able to say why those animals and only those had that feature, to give the cause of that feature. Parts of animals pursues this question. Thus his observations on any particular animal might be scattered across one or more books within and between different works.
Later generations continued to collect and record data on animals, but did not as a rule subject the data to analysis. Amongst AristotleÕs corpus have come down works now thought not to have been written by him, but by others of his school, e.g. On Breath. These texts tend to be more empirical and less theoretical than is Aristotle's usual style. Works written later still tend to organise the information in a more encyclopaedic fashion. They describe one animal more or less fully, or retail anecdotes about that animal (particularly if the animal or behaviour was unusual) and then move on to describe another, with little if any interest in, or reference to, questions of pattern, or explanation for why things were the way they were. On the whole, the standards deteriorate as we move forward in time.22
Plutarch stands apart in this respect, for he continued to engage with biological theory and posed – if rarely answered – questions about the data.23 The post-Aristotelian works on animals reflect the 'science' of their day, as the agricultural works of the Roman world succeed – in time if not in scientific content or approach – Theophrastos' botanical studies. They have been largely neglected by historians of science, but they are rich as well as unexploited sources, especially for the social historian.
There are numerous fishy references and allusions in literary authors,24 e.g. Peisistratos' casting his net over the Athenians (Herodotos 1.62) and Agamemnon entangled in a net-like robe (Aiskhulos Libation Bearers 492-4). Fish are dealt with at length and in tremendous observational detail in Aristotle's biological works. Two such observations were made again only in the C18 and C19 AD.25 At the same time, eels are one of those animals that Aristotle thought were generated spontaneously from the earth (mud in this case; HA 570a). This scientific error was not an observational error on the contrary, it was based on acute observations.26 Aristotle's observations were, on the whole, excellent (e.g. no eel had ever been seen with an egg, HA 538a8), but he could not observe everything, and sometimes the problem was not the absence of a microscope. In this case, the additional observations needed to sort out the life cycle of the eel could not be made until crossing the Atlantic was common (after AD 1500), and the actual observation of eel spawning was not made until the 1920s. Now we know that eels spawn (and then die) off the Bermudas; that their young swim across the ocean for about 3 years to appear in European rivers as elvers;27 and that elvers can travel overland for some distance. Aristotle tried to make sense of what he could see.
The interest in sea life continues with works by Theophrastos,28 minor authors, excerptors and compilers, culminates in Pliny's NH books 9 and 23, and effectively ends with OppianÕs poem Halieutica, of which parts are copied more or less wholesale by Aelian in his De natura animalium.29 The differences of approach between these authors are illustrated by, for example, their discussion of the use of poisoned bait in fishing: Aristotle mentions fishing by using a 'barley-cake' which was poisoned as bait (HA 591a18-25 with 602b31). Pliny (NH 25.116) adds an accurate description of w hat happens to the fish when it takes the bait and names the toxin (cyclamen 'root'30), and Oppian gives a confident but confused account (Hal.4.647-84).
Oppian has other strengths however. He gives a fascinating account of whaling31 in Hal. 5.131-51.
"For these monsters the line is fashioned of many strands of well-woven cord, as thick as the forestay of a ship" the well-wrought hook is rough and sharp with barbs projecting alternately on either side, strong enough to take a rock and pierce a cliff' a coiled chain is cast about the butt of the dark hook – a stout chain of beaten bronze– in the midst of the chain are set round wheels close together, to stay his wild struggles and prevent him from straightway breaking the iron in his bloody agony, as he tosses in deadly pain, but let him roll and wheel in his fitful course" roused by the wound, first, indignant, he shakes his deadly jaw against [the barbs] and strives to break the brazen cord; but his labour is in vain. Then, next, in the anguish of fiery pain he dives swiftly into the nether gulfs of the sea.32
And speedily the fishers allow him all the length of line; for there is not in men strength enough to pull him up and to overcome the heavy monster against his will. For easily he could drag them to the bottom, benched ship and all together, when he set himself to such. Straightway as he dives they let go with him into the water large skins33 filled with human breath and fastened to the line. And he, in the agony of his pain, heeds not the hides but lightly drags them down, all unwilling and fain for the surface of the foamy sea. But when he comes to the bottom with labouring heart, he haltsÉbut the skins allow him not, even if he would, to remain below, but swiftly speed upward and leap forth from the sea, buoyed by the breath within them; and a new contest arises for the whale "and he indignant rushes again to the innermost deep of the brine, and many a twist and turn he makes, now perforce, now of his own will, pulling and being pulled in turn" [comparison with woodcutters using large two-man saw] "even such is the contest between the hides and the whale he being dragged up, while they are urged the other way" now when the deadly beast is tired with his struggles and drunk with pain and his fierce heart is bent with weariness and the balance of hateful doom inclines, then first of all a skin comes to the surface, announcing the issue of victory and immediately other skins rise up and emerge from the sea, dragging in their train the huge monster, and the deadly beast is hauled up all unwillingly" (trans Mair, Loeb).
FIGURE 1 reconstruction of Oppian's whaling gear to follow
As the largest predator on the planet, with a mouth and teeth34 designed to catch and eat giant squid (but also adequate for dealing with sharks), a Sperm whale would certainly strike fear into ancient mariners. Nearchus35 saw on his voyage a shoal of large whales which clearly terrified the crews on his ships.36 Apparently on the same voyage the crews saw corals: 'in deep water there existed certain shrubs the colour of cow-horn where they branched out, and red at the top. These were brittle when handled, like glass, but turned red-hot in fire, just like iron, their original colou returning when they had cooled down (Pliny NH 13.140, trans Rackham). These unusual 'shrubs; were not merely observed, but were subjected to the common test for trying to establish the nature of anything suspicious or unknown: trial by fire.
No man has reached or measured the greatest depths of the sea, but "down to three hundred fathoms (orguia) men have explored and more or less know the deep", says Oppian, exaggerating.37
Diving for "lifeless" things is mentioned in Plato Sophist 220a, in a long discussion using fishing as a topic on which to practice constructing definitions, with consequent details about types of nets, hooks and techniques.38 Aristotle refers to divers using some kind of breathing tube in Parts of Animals 659a8-15 (Ogle trans.): "Just as divers are sometimes provided with instruments for respiration, through which they can draw air from above the water, and thus may remain a long time under the sea, so also have elephants been furnished by nature with their lengthened nostril; and, whenever they have to traverse water, they lift this up above the surface and breathe through it". [Aristotle] Problems 32 has a number of references to divers.
In • we are told that their ear-drums burst; in
• that they insert sponges into their ears to try to prevent this happening, in
• that they pour olive oil into them instead for the same purpose.39
In • we are told that they split their ears and nostrils to facilitate rapid exhalation,40 and (amazingly) that they used an inverted cauldron as a diving bell.
In considering common notions about (and presumably questioning) divers, the scientists were trying to find out, to understand, and to explain what happens to the human body in the alien environment of water. Divers' lore was being considered particularly in relation to respiration – which at that time was thought by the philosophers to be chiefly for the purpose of heat exchange, between the internal fire of the body and the external cold of the air.41
Who went diving? Pearl fishers may be the first to spring to mind42 but sponge-divers went deeper than anyone else, because the quality of the sponge improves the deeper the water in which it grows. By Aristotle's time (if not before) three distinct qualities of sponge were recognised43: the thick, hard and rough 'goats'; an unnamed thinner and softer type of sponge; and the uncommon thin and close-textured but strong 'Achilles' type of sponge, which Aristotle tells us was used to line helmets and greaves44 – in Pliny's time this type was used to apply paint (NH 9.148). The latter two types would have come from the deep waters plumbed by the ancient divers, for as Aristotle recognised, "as a general rule, sponges that are found in deep calm waters are the softest". Oppian gives a vivid account of the sponge-diver's work in Hal 5.612-74:
"Than the task of the sponge-cutters I declare that there is none worse nor any work more woeful for menÉthey zealously take watchful care that their breath may abide unscathed when they go down into the depths and that they may recover from past toil–A man is girt with a long rope above his waist and, using both hands, in one he grasps a heavy mass of lead and in his right hand he holds a sharp bill, while in the jaws of his mouth he keeps white oil. Standing upon the prow he scans the waves of the sea, pondering his heavy task and the infinite water. His comrades incite and stir him to his work with encouraging words, even as a man skilled in foot-racing when he stands upon his mark. But when he takes heart of courage, he leaps into the eddying waves and as he springs the force of the heavy grey lead drags him down. Now when he arrives at the bottom, he spits out the oil, and it shines brightly and the gleam mingles with the water, even as a beacon showing its eye in the darkness of night.45 Approaching the rocks he sees the sponges which grow on the ledges of the bottom, fixed fast to the rocksÉstraightway rushing upon them with the bill in his stout hand, like a mower, he cuts the body of the sponges, and he loiters not, but quickly shakes the rope, signalling his comrades to pull him up swiftlyÉswift as thought he is pulled to the surface; and beholding him escaped from the sea one would rejoice at once and grieve from pity: so much are his weak members relaxed and his limbs unstrung with fear and distressful labour.46
Often when the sponge-cutter has leapt into the deep waters of the sea and won his loathly and unkindly spoil, he comes up no more, unhappy man, having encountered some huge and hideous beast. Shaking repeatedly the rope he bids his comrades pull him up. And the mighty sea-monster and the companions of the fisher pull at his body rent in twain, a pitiful sight to see, still yearning for ship and shipmates' (Mair trans, Loeb).
Theophrastos set out to do for botany what Aristotle had done for zoology, namely to collect, analyse and synthesize information collected from as many quarters as possible, in order to find patterns in the flux of life.47
History of plants and Causes of plants are the result. The Greek word historia as used here is meant very much in its original sense of enquiry; hence the same work is sometimes known in English as the "History of Plants" (HP) and sometimes as the "Enquiry into Plants" (EP). So-called Causes is more a discussion of plant generation and physiology than of causes as such (and corresponds most closely to Aristotle's Generation of Animals).
Although these are Theophrastos' most famous scientific works, and he is known amongst botanists as the father of their discipline, he was a true polymath who studied and wrote on many other subjects.48 In his botanical works Theophrastos struggled with the variety of plant life, which in many ways is more difficult to organise than animal life, for the same plant can look quite different at different times of year, and at different years in its life. When he established the Lyceum as a registered religious association, with a bounded sacred area in which private buildings were erected, he also developed a garden. We assume that at least some of his detailed physiological work was done on plants grown in this garden. When he died he asked to be buried in the garden, and gave two slaves their freedom on condition that they gave four years' future work in it and that their behaviour during this time was blameless. The tendence of the whole precinct was supervised by a manumitted slave called Pompylus, who went on to achieve fame as a philosopher in his own right.49However, Theophrastos cast his net much wider than his garden, including - to continue our theme of sea life – even the flora of the sea. The various types of seaweed are described in sufficient detail for some at least to be identified with modern botanical precision.50 In addition to a detailed description, there is regular mention of the utilization of such plants, for example two plants used for dyes (4.6.551, 4.6.8), a sea 'olive' which produces a gum used in drugs to staunch bleeding (4.7.2), and a type of seaweed which he says was collected by divers and sponge-divers but he does not specify for what purpose (4.6.4).52
Cultivated and harvested plants form the mainstay of Theophrastos' database, and he spends considerable effort and space on, for example, methods of cultivation (HP passim), insect pests and what to do about them (e.g. companion planting in 7.5.4), and the collection of "juice" from medicinal plants (e.g. 6.3.2 with mention of quotas for taking roots of silphium, or 9.8.2, with mention of the opium poppy)53. This corpus of botanical knowledge was taken up by Romans who wrote on agricultural matters, such as Cato, Varro and Columella, none of whom were professional philosophers or educators.54 They turned the data into something more like manuals for plantsmen and women, dropped most of the theorising about causes and consequences, and added more practical advice on how to grow and tend particular plants which were important to the Roman farmer. There was plenty in Theophrastos for them to quarry. So Columella's practical advice on dung (2.14) for example, echoes Theophrastos' observation55 that
"Manure does not suit all [trees] alike, nor is the same manure equally good for all [trees].Some need it pungent, some less so, some need it quite light. The most pungent is human dung: thus Khartodras says that this is the best, pig-manure being second to it, goat-manure third, fourth that of sheep, fifth that of oxen, and sixth that of bushy-tailed animals [i.e. horses and mules]. Litter manure is of different kinds and is applied in various ways: some kinds are weaker, some stronger."
For the practicing farmer this is all far too vague, and later writers are much more specific about which plants like which type of manure, and when it is best applied. They also record significant variations from Theophrastos, either indicating their use of other works, now lost, or promoting their own beliefs over the "ancient wisdom" being handed down through Theophrastos.56 For example, Columella thought pig-dung was in general the poorest type of manure, not the second-best after human.
Given the current interest in organic methods, Theophrastos' botanical works might be usefully compared with modern methods and theories. For there were no synthetic chemicals in antiquity of course, and all farmers worked with what are now considered organic techniques, some of which will be familiar to 'green' readers. For example, besides the instance of companion planting above mentioned, interplanting (celery with other crops) is mentioned in HP 7.1.3, the soil warming effect of manure in 8.7.7, and green manuring (with beans) in 8.9.1.
4 Medicine
Medicine can be entertaining in a way that other areas are not, partly because empathy with ancient patients and their would-be healers comes easily to any reader, and partly because some of the ancient ideas and treatments strike the modern reader as funny, either in a humorous57 or a peculiar sense58. Perhaps because of this some of the modern scholars in this area have a lightness of touch and sense of humour which tends to be absent in other areas.59 In response to earlier generations' concentration on the so-called 'best' (i.e. most like modern) aspects of ancient medicine, it has been stressed recently that there was a variety of medical beliefs and approaches during antiquity (simultaneously and over time).60 What we recognize as the forerunner of 'modern' 'medicine' was not the only approach to health and disease, still less was it the main method of curing sick people. The wider context of medical theory and practice has also come to the fore in modern studies of ancient medicine, and a number of specific but inter-related issues have been highlighted.
There were no recognized medical qualifications in antiquity, and anyone could set themselves up as a healer. Some professed a specialism, e.g. umbilical-cord-cutter, root-cutter, or bone-setter; others were general practitioners. When the Roman authorities became interested in defining medical status, their motivation did not concern the standard or correctness of medical care, but tax liabilities and civic duties (registered healers were exempt from some of each).61 The various alternative approaches were not independent of one another nor mutually exclusive: people might go to one type of healer (e.g. a Hippocratic) when suffering from one health problem, and to another type of healer (e.g. the god Asklepios, approached via one of his healing shrines) when suffering from another.62 There wasconsiderable overlap in theory and in practice between what different individuals and groups said or did. For example Herophilus, probably the most famous scientific anatomist of antiquity, called drugs "the hands of the gods",63 and Galen was motivated (or encouraged) to enter medicine by Asclepius appearing in a dream to his father when sick64; Galen was 16 at the time. But his belief in Asklepios did not end there, for much time and many papyri later he called himself "a worshipper of Asklepios'.65 Even within the relatively small subset of healers who wrote about their medical ideas, pluralism abounds. As Vivian Nutton put it, 'The medical market-place had many stalls and many stall-holders, and patients, as well as their physicians, could choose what to buy'.66
'Medical market-place' reminds us that all medicine was private, as well as that people could choose between different remedies, therapies, and opinions on what they should do to relieve their problem. If they lived in a place big enough to have a market-place, that is. Nutton has pointed out67 that rural communities could not and did not sustain specialist drug-sellers, full-time healers, or academic theories of health and disease. The fancy parts of ancient medicine, both exotic substances or instruments and intellectual theories, are products of the cities and urbanity.68 Most people in antiquity did not live in big cities, and utilised more traditional, down to earth and locally available remedies. For example, [Aristotle] On things heard (801a28-32) explains the mechanics of three devices used by the hard-of-hearing: a clay pitcher (keramos), a pipe (aulos) and a sort of trumpet (salpinga). The first would have been to hand in any house; the second would have been widely available wherever music was taught and practiced; the third would have been much more scarce. Several scholars have pointed out that most ancients, living on and from the land, knew well the plants which grew around them, unlike most moderns.69 This point is relevant not only to herbals and pharmacopeias70 but also to e.g. recipes given in manufacturing (such as dyeing), recommendations for particular woods in carpentry, and treatises like Theophrastos' works on plants. Most people would know their local flora well, and the lore associated with different plants. But lay knowledge of the healer's art reached well beyond this, as Nutton emphasised in the context of Seneca's descriptions of his own health problems and a modern commentator's consequent assumption that he must have been a professional doctor.71 Nutton also stresses that the difference between a layman (even one writing on medical matters, such as Celsus72) and the practicing doctor lay more in their respective self-image and self-definition than in anything else.73
The medical groups are perhaps the most common "schools" in antiquity, so I give now an outline of them.
In the classical period the Asklepiads of Cos, of Knidos and of Rhodes were schools of medicine whose teachers took apprentices and trained them up in Hippocratic methods and theory, forming extended pseudo-families of practitioners.74 These groups are relatively prominent in the literary sources, but the number of such practitioners may have been few. The Hippocratic Oath barely gets mentioned in ancient medical texts, and there is plenty of evidence that many doctors did not follow its injunction not to give abortives,75 assist a suicide,76 or use the knife.77 Healers trained in one of these schools were sometimes sought out by would-be patrons,78 in much the same way that members of the Lyceum might be recruited to tutor young princes, as Strato went to Alexandria to tutor Ptolemy II.
In the Hellenistic period medical groups tend to take the names of people rather than places, and followers of "great" healers label themselves as such: Herophileans, Erasistrateans, Hippocratics. This is an era which perceived heroes in its midst, in medicine and mechanics as in politics and war; an age which promoted greatness in individuals and lost that spirit, sometimes called envy, which in previous generations flashed periodically to take the overbearing individual down a peg or two and spread the credit for achievements more widely. After Alexander blazed across the known world and went beyond it, and citizens did not hold back from promoting Ð or at least acquiescing in the self-promotion of Ð their mortal rulers to heroic or even divine status, so scholars and scientists did not hold back from promoting the man behind their brand of medicine or the inventor of a machine, by naming it after him. But as Alexander could not have done it alone,79 so neither did the great medics or mechanics, and after this temporary spell of deference to authority, from the C2 BC more labels arise, now based on the practitioner's preferred philosophy of medicine.
Thus self-styled Empiricists arise, who lumped together and labelled all previously-existing groups as Rationalists or Dogmatists, allegedly for emphasising theoretical reason or dogma rather than empirical evidence (or so said the Empiricists). Thus "Rationalists" or "Dogmatists" is a label which does not reflect one sect or school but a mixed bag of them, and could be applied to any healer who promoted or developed theories which went beyond mere observation and passive experience. Consequently it includes healers and anatomists of widely diverging and sometimes contradictory opinions. The emergence of the Empiricists is part and parcel of the general intellectual trend away from speculative theory and towards practical utility and experience which reflects the triumph of Roman values as well as Roman arms.
The first Greek doctor to work in Rome, one Archagathus, was known as 'the butcher' because of his fondness for surgery and cautery (Pliny NH 29.13). The activities of him and his kind prompted Cato to think that sending healers to Rome was one way in which the Greeks' sought revenge on their captors (Plutarch Cato 23). But things changed in the C1 BC when a Bithynian healer called Asklepiades arrived in the imperial capital and attracted many followers to his way of healing. His philosophy was based on atomist physics, not four-elements and humours, and his arrival coincided with Lucretius' poetic exposition of Epicurus' version of atomist physics in De Rerum Natura. They both moved in the circle of Cicero, Crassus and other members of the elite. Lucretius made widely known the general atomist theory which provided the philosophical underpinnings of Asklepiades' beliefs and methods.80 But much more important to Asklepiades' patients was the fact that he avoided using drugs and surgery if regimen – diet and lifestyle – could cure the problem. He aimed "to cure safely, swiftly, and pleasantly".81 This was very popular with the Romans, who were more or less disgusted by some of the ingredients to be found in Greek medicines, andliked bathing and wine, both of which were heartily endorsed by Asklepiades. In the medical market-place of that time Asklepiades did well. Shortly after, the Methodists appear, whose point of distinction from other healers was the pursuit of simple-to-follow82 rules of regimen, and a holistic approach to keeping or making the body not too wet and not too dry, these extremes being seen as the root of all health problems.
Galen was born in AD 129 and died in 210 or later. His eclecticism, his opposition to all his rivals,83 his rhetorical as well as medical skills, and perhaps above all the sheer volume of his work (which must have practically swamped any serious medical library)84 resulted – as early as the C4 AD – in Galen being left almost the only exponent of the medical art to later ages.But Galen is like Plato in the sense that both are highly atypical: as Plato is, on the whole, excellent evidence of what the average Greek did not think, so Galen is, on the whole, excellent evidence of what the average healer did not think, or do. The tendency to take Galen's rhetoric at face value and confuse his high ideals with the actual practice of most people at the time – including himself – has aptly been called by Nutton (WMT p. 60) "the creeping tyranny of Galen".
Turning from practitioners to treatments, we will follow the order of the Hippocratic Aphorisms 7.87, as most healers – and presumably even more of their patients – preferred to (Jones trans):
"those diseases which drugs cannot cure, the knife cures; those which the knife cannot cure, fire cures; those which fire does not cure must be considered incurable".
Drug-lore, which we aggrandize by calling it pharmacological information, was a popular topic in ancient times. In the same way and for the same reason that the majority of the populace needed to be self-sufficient in foodstuffs, so they needed to be self-sufficient in healthcare, although there were specialist "root-cutters" from early times.85 There was, consequently, a wide and interested readership for this sort of information. Theophrastos' HP book 9 is full of medicinal recipes. A large amount of Pliny's NH86 concerns herbal and other remedies – over 900 substances across 13 books.87 Pliny was aiming to inform the Roman paterfamilias so he that he could treat his household as in Cato's idealised portrait, and thus avoid the perils of using Greek doctors and becoming medical fashion-victims.88
Pharmacology has strong links with cosmetics: many of the same substances were used as ingredients both for cosmetics and medicines. Some conditions, e.g. dandruff or spots, could be considered as cosmetic or as medical problems, and some medical treatments might have been more acceptable if accompanied by appropriate cosmetic adjuncts. One of Apollonios Mys' remedies for dandruff, for example, is to wipe the scalp with bull's urine for a few consecutive days.89 During this time perfume would be a nice adjunct for other people's noses, if not for one's own. Colonic irrigation, on the other hand, was only used as a medical treatment, and then one of last resort.90 Mys wrote on both pharmacology and cosmetics: On easily available remedies and On perfumes and unguents were two of his more famous works, the former much cited by Galen and other medical writers, and the latter extensively quoted by Athenaeus (e.g. 15.38.688e-9b). The popularity of the former work no doubt derived partly from the fact that the vast majority of the ingredients were easy to obtain – growing commonly in the wild, in fields or in gardens, from where they could be gathered at no cost, or available at little expense from ordinary town and country markets and fairs. Some doctors had gardens in which they grew their own simples (e.g. Antonius Castor mentioned by Pliny NH 25.9). The remedies must have had a good reputation for efficacy too, of course!
The earliest sophisticated work on drugs seems to have started in the search for poisons and antidotes against them (pharmakon means drug, and can mean poison, beneficial drug, or even magical spell; when used in a negative sense the word "deleterious" is often added). The royal courts which patronised intellectuals unintentionally fostered the development of poisons, for the monarchical power and prestige which permitted such patronage was sought by others, who needed to dispose of the current incumbent in order to further their own ambitions. Political assassinations are rare in ancient democracies, but potentially ever-present in absolutist monarchies of the ancient kind. Philip, Alexander, and those who went before and after them rose to and kept their seats on the Macedonian throne partly by disposing of rivals – a tradition carried on in the Successor states, as later did many Roman emperors. Powerful people needed to protect themselves from those who would take their power. Thus poisons to kill men spawned antidotes to save them,91 and both became recognised as useful drugs when mixed with other substances.92 In the late Roman law on sale93 there is a discussion dealing with the problem of differentiating between poisons and medicines: "Some are of the opinion that a contract to buy poisonous drugs will not stand [as a legal contract] any more than a partnership or a mandate for an improper purpose: this opinion may be considered sound with respect to those [poisonous drugs] which do not admit of being compounded with another substance into something useful to man; but the contrary is true of those which lose their hurtful qualities by mixture with other substances, so that antidotes and other health-giving medicines are prepared from them". Things had been simpler in Theophrastos' day: with regard to wolf's bane (aconite) he reported "it is said that it is not lawful even to have it in oneÕs possession, under pain of death" (HP 9.16.7, Hort trans.). Judicial executions were not unusual in ancient Athens, but the number of offences which carried the death penalty automatically on conviction were not many,94 so if Theophrastos was well informed on this point, this is quite significant. This was not the same poison as was used for judicial executions, by the way: Sokrates' execution, as tradition records, was by hemlock.
Thus it is to the absolutist kingdoms of the Hellenistic period that we must turn to find the earliest Greek treatises on poisons.95 An Alexandrian doctor called Andreas (fl. c. 240-200 BC) was a renowned pharmacologist. He was court physician to Ptolemy IV, and benefitted from royal patronage, as did Krateuas (court physician to Mithridates), Diokles (court physician to Attalus III) and Galen (physician to Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Severus). Andreas' works are lost, but he was one of only two predecessors of Dioscorides to win that great pharmacologist's grudging praise for accuracy. Not so Nicander, who was probably contemporary with Andreas. He was not a scientist but a litt*rateur. He took earlier generations of scientists' accurate observations, organisation and terminology of toxicological material,96 and scrambled them to produce the Theriaca and the Alexipharmaca. He subtracted accuracy, structure and sense in order to add literary allusions, colour or interest, and he squashed, stretched or substituted information until it fitted his chosen metre. Poetic license and scientific treatise do not normally mix well, and certainly do not do so here. Scarborough worked hard to recover some pharmacological sense from Nicander's poems.97
Dioscorides' De materia medica, written around AD 60, is the most important ancient pharmacological text surviving from antiquity. It mentions some 4,740 drugs. Riddle 1985 has shown that the organising principle of this work – for long a mystery, rather like AristotleÕs Historia Animalium – is the physiological effects of the drugs he describes. And this system was based on very careful and acute observation, an empirical method, informed by then current theories of physical properties such as "drying" or "heating". This method was not appreciated by his successors, who preferred to arrange the material by a system of organisation more like an A-Z by drug name, or by location of the problem, which made the resulting book easier and quicker to consult and use.
Galen brings together the work of many distinguished predecessors and contemporaries, some well known such as Dioscorides, others less so such as Andromachus or Statilius Crito. He wrote three large treatises on drugs: Mixtures and properties of simples, which lists about 440 plants and 250 other substances in alphabetical order; Compound drugs arranged by location of ailment, which starts with the head and works down to the feet;98 and Compound drugs arranged by kind, which orders them by the type of drug - purgatives, ointments, caustics and so on. His personal store of preciousdrugs (e.g. cinnamon bark), along with other treasures and a large part of his library, was lost in the fire of 192 when the Temple of Peace and surrounding buildings were burnt to the ground (14.64-66 K). Earlier in his life he had made considerable efforts to locate and secure supplies of especially important substances, such as Lemnian earth, Cypriot copper ores, and aloe.99
Before moving on to surgery a word or two about anaesthetics is in order. There were none to speak of. Painkillers and sleeping potions were available, but they were not given before surgery, and their efficacy has in most cases yet to be tested (assuming that the drugs used can be identified in the first place). Celsus once mentions opium as a painkiller for a headache. He tells the reader to soak a piece of bread in "poppy head decoction", and then wear it ("put the bread on the head" De Medicina 3.10.2).
Much of human anatomy was based on animal anatomy, because there was a taboo against desecrating human bodies,100 even in Egypt – embalming is not dissection, still less vivisection. The esteem in which surgeons are held these days is really very modern; until recently, surgeons were approached by patients and other healers as a last resort. This may have had something to do with the lack of anaesthetics, or the fact that some of the surgeon's instruments are essentially carpenter's tools made of better materials, for example the bow saw for drilling holes or bone chisel for tidying up fractures.101 Surgery has not been a popular topic in the history of medicine, perhaps because one needs a strong stomach to work even as a historian in this area. As Celsus said of the ideal surgeon,
"Now a surgeon should be youthful, or at any rate nearer youth than old age, with a strong and steady hand that never trembles, and ready to use the left hand as well as the right; with vision sharp and clear, and spirit undaunted; filled with pity, so that he wishes to cure his patient, yet is not moved by his cries to go too fast or cut less than is necessary, but he does everything just as if the cries of pain cause him no emotion".103
In these circumstances one might ask: who needed the greatest courage – the patient, or the surgeon? From my own experience104 I would think that the surgeon needed the most courage. For the patient would go through the experience rarely or just once, in circumstances not of his own choosing, and in desperation; by contrast, the surgeon would go through it in the course of his daily work, his chosen occupation, trying to help people but having to hurt them in the process. Further, despite being conscious throughout, the patient may remember nothing of it afterwards, the mind apparently being able to short-circuit traumatic memories; by contrast, the surgeon would need active effort of will to keep the screams which he caused out of his mind and his nightmares. A certain insensitivity must have been required of any surgeon, and the development of sensitivities over time and through experience perhaps tended to make surgery the province of the young.
Galen avoided surgery after his three years or so youthful experience patching up gladiators. He recommended to his readers using pigs, not apes, when vivisecting around the head, on the grounds that "the unpleasing expression of the ape"105 distracted students from following the lesson, and we may assume that the expressions Ð as well as the noises Ð made by peopleunder the knife were a good deal more upsetting for the surgeon as well as any apprentices he might have with him.This leads on to consideration of the practice of human vivisection, performed by Herophilus and Erasistratus in quite exceptional political and economic circumstances. Those circumstances were the private patronage of one or possibly two kings,106 whose rule was absolute, and whose power over the life and death of their subjects included the power to choose the method of execution for condemned criminals. One or both kings chose - for whatever reason - to spend time and money on supporting intellectuals of various types, and they were prepared –for whatever reason– to sanction and support the vivisection of some people in the interests of anatomical research by two other men. Viewed in the light of normal surgical practices, and in particular the absence of anaesthetics, human vivisection was at that time not so far from the norm as it would appear to be today. The essential difference was that surgeons aimed to improve the life of their subjects, or at least not make things worse, whilst vivisectionists aimed to understand the workings of the subjects" bodies, and were expected to kill them in the process.
That is a big difference, and I do not underestimate it. But we live in an age when even laboratory rats are rendered unconscious before vivisection, and the idea of humans being cut open whilst conscious is, I suspect, more shocking to us than it should be in this context. In antiquity, all cutting was done on sentient people and animals. Surgical texts and aphorisms spell out for the reader the symptoms and prognosis for clinical shock, caused by such an assault on the senses: death. There simply was not a nice clean line between surgery which saved and vivisection which killed; cutting was done without anaesthetics whoever wielded the knife, for whatever purpose, on whichever person, and was potentially lethal in any case. If one survived the surgery one could be killed by a post-operative infection, since there was no knowledge of microscopic organisms or understanding of sterilization.107 This leads us nicely to nature's universal cleanser: fire. Cautery does have something to recommend it.
I know of no modern study of cautery, antiquity's version of laser treatment. It was used principally for cutting and sealing minor wounds and haemorrhages,108 cleaning up putrid wounds and gangrenous tissue,109 and burning off some kinds of growths and other protrusions.110 Theophrastus (On Fire 37) mentions cautery for warts, for example. Branding is very similar, except that it creates a skin "blemish" rather than removes it.111 The iron is used widely in Columella for medical treatment of animals, and even for a sort of castration of cocks,112 so there seems little reason to think that specialist cauterers were required to apply the iron. Celsus provides a general account of how to look after post-cautery burns.113
The Hippocratic treatise on Haemorrhoids gives some idea of treatment by cautery (€2, trans. Potter).
First, undertake to find out where the haemorrhoids are; for to incise the anus, to amputate from it, to lift it by sewing, to
cauterize it, or to remove something from it by putrefaction – these seem to be dangerous, but in fact will do no harm. I bid you to
prepare seven or eight irons, a span in length, and the width of a wide probe; bend these at the end, and also make them flat at the end like a small obol. Clean the site you are attempting to cauterize beforehand with a medication, have the person lie on his back, and place a pillow beneath the loins. Force the anus out as far as possible with your fingers; heat the irons red-hot, and burn until you so dry the haemorrhoids out that you do not need to anoint: burn them off completely, leaving nothing uncauterized.
You will recognize haemorrhoids without difficulty, for they rise above the surface in the interior of the anus like livid grapes, and when the anus is forced outwards, they spurt out blood. Let assistants hold the patient down by his head and arms while he is being cauterized so that he does not move –but let him shout during the cautery, for that makes the anus stick out more.114 After you have applied the cautery, boil lentils and chickpeas in water, pound them smooth, and apply this as a plaster for five or six days. On the seventh day, cut a soft sponge as thin as possible –it should be six fingers broad in every directionÐplace a piece of thin fine linen cloth equal in size to the sponge on top of it, and smear with honey.It continues by telling the reader what to do with his sponge.
Finally, an interesting but difficult study of ancient psychiatry by G Roccatagliata 1986 is worth mentioning because there is very little modern work in this area, although ancient sensitivity to the mind at work was not confined to logic and epistemology, but extended well into psychology and mental health.115 For example, there is a surprisingly large number of words for mental disorders in the Hippocratic corpus and other medical texts – indeed, there are more Greek words than English words for such disorders.
The Peripatetic author of Physiognomics argues explicitly about the relationship of mind to body, with reference to psychiatric treatment (e.g. 808b11-30). Roccatagliata treats magic and religious aspects as well as general philosophical positions and clinical approaches.116
There is little modern work on this subject, and most of what has been and is being done is in German.117
Some diseases strike both humans and other species, e.g. foot and mouth. The bones of men and animals break in much the same way and need much the same treatment to mend. Thus, as in more recent periods, healers may treat both humans and animals, and we find for example Orion the groomÕs panacea mentioned by Galen, and treatments for mange in Dioscorides. The Roman paterfamilias (ideally) looked after the health of his family, his slaves and his animals. It is not then surprising that there are parallels to be found for health problems and treatments in surviving works on human and animal medicine.118 Outside military service, most veterinarians, like most doctors, were probably non-professional, but in the late empire a body of hereditary public slaves, the mulomedici, existed to tend the animals used in the Roman imperial postal service, and were based at the service stations along the routes.119
The word hippiatros, horse-doctor, is attested from the C3 BC (Fischer 1988 p. 191-2). Veterinarius is an older word than mulomedicus, horse/mule-doctor, which is first attested in Diocletian's Edict of AD 301. The word veterinarius has been given different origins in recent literature. According to Dixon and Southern120, it is derived from veho, to draw or pull, emphasising the link with draught animals; they offer no explanation for the rest (the bulk) of the word. According to Karasszon (p. 86) it is derived from sus-ovis-taurus, pig-sheep-cattle, and he cites in support of this derivation the suovetaurinarii, who looked after these animals prior to sacrifice.121 Besides the more complete account offered by Karasszon, I note that one of the earliest uses of the phrase "veterinary medicine" occurs in the context of the delivery of lambs,122 and sheep were never, as far as I know, used as draught animals.
There is a reasonable amount on animal diseases and cures in Aristotle's history of animals (book 8), the information coming largely from farmers and herders it would seem. At about the same date a large treatise was written by the Carthaginian Mago, which is lost, but its influence was felt for over 1300 years. On the orders of the Senate it was translated into Latin in 146 BC; Cassius Dionysius translated it into Greek early in the first century BC; and Diophanes of Bithynia then epitomised it into 6 books. All these are lost. However, Mago continues to be cited through these translations and abridgements in those writers which have survived to us, e.g. Columella and Pliny, the latest being the C10 AD Geoponica.
Vergil's Georgics describes sick animals in some detail, and offers remedies, but this information has for the most part come from Varro's Rerum Rusticarum.123 Columella and Pliny also discuss animal welfare in more or less detail.124 Varro (2.1.21) distinguishes between those ailments of cattle which need treatment by a veterinarian, and those which the skilled herdsman ought to be able to treat successfully himself.125 Pliny (NH 8.63) offers preventative treatments for dogs against rabies, which includes putting chicken-dung in the dog's food for the 30 days when Sirius is shining. Columella thought that dogs could be rendered immune to rabies if their tails were docked in a certain way (7.12.14). Columella also describes the construction of a "machina" to hold large animals firmly, to enable the less pleasant treatments, such as castration (6.26), to be administered safely (6.19). It is a confining pen with optional head holds. Something similar was built to make life easier for donkey stallions attempting to cover mares (Columella 6.37.10).
Most ancient veterinary treatises surviving concentrated on horses.126 There was a certain amount of hippomania in the Ancient world. To cite only the most famous cases, the plot of Aristophanes' Clouds is motivated by a young man's expensive obsession with horses; Alexander named a city after his horse Bucephalus; Augustus erected a funeral mound for a horse; Caligula tried to make his horse Icinatus consul; Nero gave his favorite horses official (and paid) positions; Hadrian built a magnificent tomb for his favorite Boristhenes; and Commodus had PertinaxÕs hooves gilded. Turning from idiosyncratic emperors to the rest of the population, the role of the circus in pleb-management during the late Republic and early empire is well known and enshrined in the idiom "bread and circuses". That developed in the late empire into a situation where the supporters of racing teams were more dedicated/fanatical than some modern football fans – one riot between the Blues and the Greens turned into a full scale revolt, which left many thousands dead (the lowest ancient figure is 30,000), parts of the city of Constantinople in ashes, and "all but cost Justinian (emperor AD 527-65) his throne".127 The heavy bias in ancient veterinary works towards horses is not, in this context, surprising.
Vegetius Mulomedicina (the only Latin veterinary work surviving entire)128 was based, according to the author, on all previous Latin authors on horse medicine. Two of those, whose works survive in an incomplete state, were his younger contemporaries Pelagonius, who wrote the Ars Veterinaria (C4 AD),129 and the author of the Mulomedicina Chironis,130 which, despite the title, was written not by (the centaur) Chiron but by Hierokles. Vegetius adds that he consulted medici (human doctors) as well as mulomedici (horse doctors).
The Geoponica is a compilation of farmers' lore collected by the Byzantine scholar Bassus in the C10 AD,131 which includes a fair amount of material on the medical treatment of draught and farm animals. The Hippiatrica132 is another compilation, contemporary with the Geoponica, which drew on the works of about 400 authors and is concerned (as its name suggests) with horse medicine above all, but mules, asses and oxen are mentioned occasionally.
1. Even linguistically: what we translate "body fluids" or "humours", cumoi, can also mean fruit juice or plant sap.
2. Better known in a less literal translation as "man is a political animal". Throughout this page the word "man' is used consciously. The
ancients regarded the adult male as the highest human form; woman was deficient in some degree; children were deficient in larger degree.
Therefore on many occasions to substitute "human" or "person" would be to misrepresent them; they said man and they meant man. In the case of Aristotle's dictum, for example, "human" would make nonsense of his point, for only adult males could be citizens, polites, full members of the polis.3. Oppian records a special friendship between a boy and a dolphin in his own time, Hal. 5.458-518. He goes on (line 520) to say that dolphins "have a heart so much at one with men" (Mair trans.; the key terms are qumoV and homofronew).
4. E.g. CirceÕs pigs or Narcissus. The gods themselves were portrayed in e.g. literature and sculpture as larger-than-life people, and there are also half-human half-animal figures such as Pan.
5. Most of GalenÕs errors derive from his superimposition of ape soft tissues on a human skeleton.
6. E.g. Thukydides 2.50 on the Athenian plague of 430 killing dogs and carrion birds as well as people.
7. E.g. preparations made from blister-beetles for skin complaints and birth problems; for full discussion see Beavis 1988 pp. 168-73.
8. See frags. 33, 159, 169 in Edelstein and Kidd. Since Greek philosophers typically reserved possession of the highest human and rational faculties to adult men, it could be argued that they drew a stronger line between adult men and all other animals than between humans and all other animals.
9. E.g. The cleverness of animals, Mor. 959b-985c, Animals are rational, Mor. 985d-992e. In general on these ancient arguments about animals and human use of them see Sorabji 1993.
10. Parts of Animals 681a10-15 (Ogle trans.), in the context of various types of sea creature, such as sea-anemones. There is an extended discussion of borderline life-forms and their relevance to Aristotle's methodology in Lloyd 1996a chapter 3.
11. AristotleÕs view in On the soul is that plants, like all living things, have soul, but soul varies from the "nutritive" or "vegetative" soul of
plants to the rational soul of man.12. As Meiggs commented in his preface, "there was much more evidence to find than was generally assumed" for his book on Trees and timber in the ancient Mediterranean World 1982, which he brought to a close somewhat reluctantly after 10 years' research. This work is not a study of ancient scientific ideas on trees; Meiggs was an ancient historian utilising scientific sources to better understand history, drawing his information especially from Theophrastos' botanical works and Pliny's encyclopaedia. A major problem besetting all modern works on ancient biology is identification; some scholars may appear to others as being too ready, or too slow, to identify an ancient X with a modern Y. There is a good brief discussion of the problems in Riddle 1985 pp. xxii-xxvi.
13. Davies (classicist) and Kithramby (zoologist) 1986; Beavis (classicist and entomologist) 1988.
14. This is not to say that Aristotle was not interested in insects; the emphasis is on the ÔrelativelyÕ. See Davies & Kithramby pp. 16-29 for
general discussion.15. Beavis considers all primary sources up to AD 600, and some later Greek works; he includes all insects except the honey bee (which has been well treated elsewhere in studies of apiculture), and all invertebrates except snails (which were done in Thompson 1947) and internal parasites (apparently not yet done by anyone). He assesses previous identifications, and gives excellent summaries of ancient beliefs and uses Ð including medicinal uses – associated with each of the invertebrates and insects covered. Davies and Kithramby are less comprehensive in the literary sources utilised and taxa covered, but they include the honey bee, discuss etymology, folk-lore, and other social contexts in which insects feature (including art), and comparative anthropological material on the same.
16. See esp. Scarborough's articles on Nicander.
17. There is also a 2-volume work On Plants attributed to Aristotle, which survives as a Greek translation of a medieval Latin translation of an Arabic translation of the original Greek; needless to say, it is not a very satisfactory text, littered with textual difficulties. A considerable part of Book 1 is concerned with the sheer variety of plant life; a considerable part of Book 2 is concerned with physical (four-elements) theories.
18. The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine produces a quarterly international bibliography on Current work in the history of medicine, which started in 1954. A compilation of these up to 1977 fills 18 volumes: Subject Catalogue of the History of Medicine, Munich 1980. Much of this concerns other periods of course, but ancient medicine is well represented.
19. This applies to Roman times too, when all manner of exotic animals were shipped to Rome for the private enjoyment of the emperor and public entertainment of the plebs (and were sometimes made available for people like Galen to dissect after their "performance" in the arena). Amongst these, the range and number of sea-creatures reported are very few: a replica (model) of a beached whale was brought into the arena in Septimius Severus' time (AD 193-211), Dio Epitome of Roman History 76.16.5; a polar bear, Calpurnius Eclogue 7.64-8 (the association with seals is the crucial element – the white bear in the Pompe of Ptolemy and presumably kept in the Alexandrian zoo was perhaps an albino rather than a polar bear; see Jennison 1937 p. 34); and unspecified sea-beasts in Pliny NH 9.5.15.
20. Parts of Animals 644b30 Ogle trans..
21. The same animal thus might appear in several different sets, each defined by the difference in question. See Balme 1987, Lennox 1991 and 1994, Gotthelf 1985 and 1988, and Lloyd 1996a.
22. By the time we get to Tzetzes (AD C12) we find confident assertions of such nonsense as "Some uncritical people say that vultures bring forth live young, and that they produce milk and have breasts and other like things. But I have discovered that, just as all tigers are males, so also all vultures are female. During five days flying with the rump against the winds, they conceive offspring begotten by the wind" Khiliades (ed Leone 1968) 12.723-8.
The general idea of impregnation by the wind goes back to Homer (Iliad 16.150), and even Aristotle believed in "wind-eggs" (e.g. GA 750b24), but for him these were unfertilised eggs.
23. See especially Whether land or sea animals are cleverer (Mor.959-985) and The causes of natural phenomena (Mor.911-919). Curiosity is not entirely absent in Aelian; for example, he records an experiment (burning) to try to establish the nature of an old and badly preserved pickled specimen which some claimed was a Triton, 13.21.
24. Davidson 1997 is full of them, including translations of many fragmentary and obscure sources, most of which are given in Greek in
Thompson 1947. See also Richmond 1973.25. That two particular fish are hermaphrodite, and that one type of dog-fish embryo is attached to the uterus by a placenta, respectively; for the latter there is a diagram in Thompson 1947 p. 41.
26. For another Aristotelian case of spontaneous generation based on acute observation, to wit the emergence of itch mites from subcutaneous tunnels in human flesh, see A Keaveney & J Madden 1982.
27. This great Atlantic migration, like others of its type, probably developed over a geological time-scale with and because of the continental
drift of the Americas away from Europe.28. His On Fish has recently been published with text, translation and commentary by Sharples 1992. Theophrastos also included sea life in
treatises such as On animals which change colour (notably the octopus).29. Or the sources for parts, in which case the close agreement between the relevant passages results from both Oppian and Aelian copying from the same earlier source. They were contemporaries, living in the late C2 early C3 AD.
30. The use of the term "root" for corms, bulbs, tubers and so on is normal in ancient texts. Even Theophrastos failed to distinguish these structures from roots.
31. Whales swim in the Mediterranean. Sperm whales were the most common large species in ThompsonÕs day (1947 p. 280). Aristotle refers to whales several times, especially regarding respiration and reproduction, and seems quite familiar with them. Aelian 17.6 refers to large whales off the Laconian coast and Kythera, and his ÔRam-fishesÕ of the Sardinia/Corsica area (15.2) are perhaps Killer Whales, Thompson s.v. krioi.
I include Oppian's account not only for its intrinsic interest but also because it seems to have been overlooked in histories of whaling, which typically state that whaling (by peoples other than Inuits) began many centuries later.
32. Sperm whales can dive to great depths (2,500 metres recorded, and over 3,000 metres on the evidence of stomach contents) and can stay underwater for well over an hour; Cherfas 1988 pp. 34-5.
33. eureaV askouV. These seem to be sewn cattle-hides like Cato's culleus, De Agricultura 154, which there is used for transporting overland large quantities of wine.
34. On lower jaw only; they fit into sockets in the upper jaw.
35. Alexander the Great's admiral for the voyage down the Indus, along the Indian Ocean coast and up the Persian Gulf.
36. Arrian Indika 30; he says they were seen Ôalong the coast from Cyiza'. Aelian refers to huge whales off the coast of Gedrosia, 17.6.
37. Oppian Hal. 1.82-5. At about 6 feet to the orguia, this translates to c. 1800 feet or 600 metres. A recreational diver informs me that, using weights to descend fast (as the ancients did), 180' is quite possible without breathing apparatus (100' holding the breath is apparently routine), and that c. 300 " is achievable but scary". The current world champion free diver can swim down to 150 m, where the pressure is so great that his lungs are compressed to 1/7th their normal volume, and back to the surface, on one lungful of air, in about 5 minutes. DonÕt try this at home.
38. 219d-221c. There are more details of gear and techniques in Aelian
12.43.39. For this curious practice I know no parallel. However, sperm whales have quantities of a liquid wax (once thought to be the whale's semen, hence the name sperma~ceti) in their heads, which we now know aides buoyancy, because its density varies with temperature and they seem to be able to control that temperature (how is not known). They also (like other whales) sometimes have a waxy plug in their ears. It seems to me possible that the ancient divers were imitating natureÕs greatest diver, on the basis of their understanding of the anatomy and physiology of that great "sea-monster".
40. Again this practice may possibly have started in imitation of the whale, which can empty and refill its lungs in half the time humans take, shifting thousands of times more air in the process. A whale's almost explosive exhalation is the most distinctive feature of the creature as seen from the surface. Aristotle certainly thought that the divers' chief concern on
reaching the surface was exhalation.41. See e.g. Aristotle PA III.6 (669a). Theophrastos was not so sure: in Fish 3 he says "perhaps more remarkable than [that a creature should be able with the same organs to take in air at one time and moisture at another] is that at one time air should be suitable for the cooling, or whatever it is that is the effect of respiration, but at another moisture" (Sharples trans). Habitat, diet and anatomy were other concerns which arose particularly with regard to animals which have a double way of life (amphibios, Democritus' term, whence our term amphibian) or dualize (epamphoterizein, Aristotle's term), and Theophrastos went on to consider [Marine] Creatures that remain [for a while] on dry land (lost).
42. See e.g. Pliny NH 9.111. Octopuses also seem to have been caught by divers –at least, that is the obvious way to make sense of NH 9.86: "their lairs can be pin-pointed by the broken shells lying in front of them the octopus is stupid, for instance it swims towards a man's hand".
43. HA 548a32-549a13. Named sponge-diving places are off the coasts of Torone, Lycia, the Hellespont, and Cape Malea. Theophrastos HP cites the north coast of Krete for the same, 4.6.5. In Aristotle's time sponges were said by some to have a certain sensibility (they contract when they sense a sponge-diver), but the people of Torone dispute this, he cautions HA 487b10-15.
The difference between Aristotle and some of his successors can be illustrated well here: the assertion about a sponge's sensibility is repeated essentially unchanged but without the caution by Pliny 9.148, is embroidered by Aelian 8.16, and is elaborated with blood by Oppian 651 (omitted from excerpt). Thompson (1947 p. 250) says that this behaviour may be true of the limpet, but is not true of the sponge, thus the people of Torone were right and Aristotle was right to be cautious. Lloyd 1996 chapter 3 argues that this case and others like it (is it an animal? is it a plant?) testify to Aristotle's undogmatic approach to biological classification.
44. Note that Aristotle does not refrain from commenting on the utilitarian aspects of the "scientific" material under consideration, as we saw also with the diver's respiration tube.
45. This practice and its purported effect is also reported by Pliny NH 2.234 and Plutarch Causes of natural phenomena 12 (Mor. 915a) and On the principle of cold 13 (Mor. 950b-c). In both cases Plutarch mentions it as a physical problem requiring explanation; in the former he offers the idea that the greater density of oil pushes the sea apart and offers channels of transparency, in the latter that air in the oil provides the transparency.
Ptolemy seems to promote a theory in which light is related to brightness and colour, and which is derived from Aristotle (e.g. On the Soul 418b1-19a25); see e.g. Optics 2.5 "colours are never seen in darkness, except for [the colour of] an object that shines from inherent whiteness or that is exceedingly polished, for each of these is a case of brightness, and brightness is a kind of luminosity" (Smith trans.) This is consistent with the notion of white oil of itself being able to provide illumination, irrespective of the truth of either the empirical or theoretical claims. The light levels below the surface vary with the condition of the water, but all waters are pitch black by 900Õ/300m.
46. The current record for holding the breath underwater is over 7 minutes, though this was set in an environment involving no exertion. Anyone attempting to stay underwater for more than a couple of minutes risks blacking out, ÔrelaxingÕ in OppianÕs words.
47. See Gotthelf 1988.
48. The Theophrastos Project, under the direction of W W Fortenbaugh, began in 1979, and produced a fundamental two-volume work on Theophrastos: sources for his life, writings, thought and influence Brill, Leiden in 1992. This work gives texts in Greek, Latin or Arabic with English translation of all references to TheophrastosÕ works from earliest times to C15 AD. Annual conferences on Theophrastean Studies are published by Rutgers University in the Studies in Classical Humanities Series (RUSCH), Transactions Publishers, London and New Brunswick. For further information, contact Prof. W Fortenbaugh, Project Theophrastus, Alexander Library, Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903, USA.49. The details of TheophrastosÕ Last Will and Testament are given by Diogenes Laertius 5.52-5. On Pompylus, see Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 2.18.8.
50. The first comprehensive attempt to identify the plants mentioned by Theophrastos was undertaken by Sprengel in 1822. His views were taken up by Wimmer, Teubner edition. Thiselton-Dyer provided the identifications for Hort's English translation in the Loeb, and where identifications were impossible or were to plants unfamiliar to British readers, Hort cautiously transliterated the Greek or rendered it literally on etymological principles. Meiggs notes that some of these need reconsideration (1982 p. 481 n.6).
51. This plant is actually a coastal margin plant, litmus, rather than a sea-plant as such.
52. In modern times seaweeds are used to make food for humans and animals, fertilizer, and (as a Greek student informs me is done today in some parts of Greece) an alcoholic drink. According to Lobban & Harrison 1994 p. 283 collection of seaweed for food started in Europe c. 500 AD, but Theophrastos was writing c. 800 years earlier than this. Nicander mentions a seaweed for snakebite (Theriaca 845) and Pliny mentions a seaweed used to treat gout ("the sovereign remedy" for this ailment in his view), other problems of the joints, and as a dye, NH 26.66.
53. The human tendency now and in the past to focus attention on cultivated or harvested plants is discussed by Preus 1988.
54. Cato is better known as the Censor, which office was the highpoint of his distinguished political career, and for his dictum ÔCarthage must be destroyedÕ. Varro was born ten years before Cicero in 116 BC; his political and military career included serving under Pompey in Spain in 76-1 and in the campaign against the pirates in 67, being elected tribune of the plebs (in ?70), and praetor (in ?68). After being on the losing side in the civil war, his learning was recognised by Caesar, who promoted him sideways (and out of politics) to the headship of the public library in Rome (Suetonius Caesar 44.4). He wrote prolifically on numerous subjects, especially history and language. He died in 27, aged 89. Columella was a native of Cadiz in Spain, living in the C1 AD, and a contemporary of Seneca and Pliny. He served as military tribune in Syria, probably during Tiberius" reign.
55. HP 2.7.4 (Hort trans.); other comments on manure are scattered throughout the work.
56. A good discussion of this process, with reference to his minor rather than his botanical works, is given by Sharples 1988.
57. E.g. succussion, wherein the patient (suffering from a variety of ailments, but particularly prolapse or other wanderings of the womb) is tied to a ladder or plank longer than herself. The ladder is then banged vigorously on the floor, patient head up or head down, depending on which direction the doctor seeks to move the offending organ or part. It is somewhat reminiscent of the modern tendency to fix electrical things by thumping them.
58. E.g. the various medicaments involving urine or dung of one sort or another, ingested or applied externally. There is a notable overlap here between medicaments and cosmetics: crocodile-dung, for example, was used in Roman times as a foundation (to whiten the face) and as a treatment for skin problems like eczema. It was probably a lot more healthy (for consumers as well as collectors/ producers) than the usual material used as a foundation at least since the C6 BC Ð white lead. However, the term "crocodile-dung" may be an Egyptian code-name for "Ethiopian soil" (presumably a particular earth found beyond Upper Egypt; Lemnian and Samian earths were highly prized for skin preparations); thus it appears in the substitution list in Betz 1996, 167-9. Other substances used are liable to make the modern reader cringe (e.g. a womanÕs menses or equine amniotic fluid), but the sanitization of modern life keeps most of us in a state of blissful ignorance about similar things used as ingredients in our cosmetics and drugs. Do not be too hasty to judge the ancients, especially on subjects which are modern taboos.
59. Notably Majno 1975, Nutton (many articles and books, mostly on Galen), and Scarborough (esp. articles on pharmacology). Even Heiberg can be funny when he talks about ancient medicine e.g. on Galen being saved from "drowning in his own ink-pot", 1922 p. 99. Although Heiberg is best known for his editions of the Greek mathematicians, he also motivated the production of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (and his name appears on part 1, volume 1 of it), edited Paul of Aigina (medical compiler of C7 AD, CMG 9.1-2) and SimpliciusÕ Commentary on AristotleÕs De Caelo; he completed the edition of HeroÕs Opera (vols 4 and 5), and contributed to the Catalogue des
manuscripts alchimiques Grecs; see Keyser 1990b.60. Lloyd and others, e.g. the Wellcome team in The Western Medical Tradition 1995 (henceforth WMT).
61. See Nutton WMT p. 45; see also his 1985a, esp. pp. 29-30. The same see of regulations disqualified calculatores from such tax immunities.
62. See Nutton WMT p. 16.
63. See T248a-c and T249 in von Staden 1989.
64. The order of my own books, 19.59K.
65. My own books 2.19.19; more generally, see Kudlien 1981.
66. WMT p. 4. Porter 1983, p. 15 was the first, as far as I know, to stress this aspect, saying that "medicine has always been, to a large degree, a buyers' market".
67. WMT p. 39f.
68. Galen makes the contrast explicit when he comments e.g. on remedies used by Ôrural' doctors, such as cooked centipedes or millipedes for ear-ache, On Simples 11.49 (12.366-7 K), or on the honesty of small town doctors compared with the charlatans and professed healers in Rome, Prognosis [Ôto Epigenes' has no MS authority] 1.4 (14.603-5, 620-23 K).
69. E.g. Scarborough 1986, p. 60 (donÕt let the cheap typescript production put you off reading this book). We might compare the one apparently widespread bit of folk-knowledge today, that dock leaves take the sting out of nettles.
70. And not just works entitled Readily accessible remedies or suchlike.
71. Nutton 1985a p. 31 n.24.
72. CelsusÕ de Medicina is essentially a Latin translation of a Greek text by Aufidius, a Sicilian; Farrington 1949 p. 127. The range of Celsus' original encyclopaedic work is indicated by the fact that Vegetius' Epitome of Military Science book 1 (on the recruitment and training of troops) was once thought to be based largely on Celsus; Milner 1996 p. xvii-xxi. The lost part of CelsusÕ work also included some material on veterinary medicine.
73. Nutton 1985a pp. 33-8. Lloyd 1995 stresses the links between this and the epistemological concerns of some writers on Greek medicine.
74. The pseudo-familial element comes out best in the Hippokratic Oath, which those who joined such groups had to swear. The initiate swears to respect his master as his parents, to regard the master's sons as his brothers, and to pass on the knowledge to his own sons, his master's sons, and to those pupils duly apprenticed and sworn in to the sect.
75. On which see Riddle 1992.
76. It is not clear what sort of assistance, if any, people needed in this matter. Pliny, for example, states in a discussion of suicide that every man Ôhas the power to produce (a timely death) for himselfÕ NH 28.9. Stoic philosophy recommended suicide in some circumstances, and there are numerous famous or glorious, real or fictional, suicides in Greek and Roman culture, e.g. Alkestis, Demosthenes, Midas, the 300 Spartans at Thermopylai, Dido, Cato, Cleopatra, Mithridates. Hippocrates Places in Man 39 offers remedies to help improve the mood of those who wanted to hang themselves. Amundsen 1996 chapter 4 discusses the impact early Christianity made on ancient attitudes to suicide.
77. On which see Jackson 1990 with illustrations of all known types of Roman medical instrument, and select bibliography of works on Roman medicine published in the 1980's.
78. For example, Sherwin-White 1978 pp. 266-74 lists honours awarded by different communities around the Aegean to 10 different healers trained in the Hippokratic school on Cos who had moved to those communities and served their citizens particularly well. See especially no. 5, which describes how states applied to the Coans for a doctor to be sent out to them.
79. And could not continue when the army mutinied at the River Hyphasis.
80. The interrelationships between physical theories and medical theories were explored in antiquity in a number of treatises, and a number of philosophers dealt with both, Theophrastos for example; see the list of his book titles in Diog. Laert. 5.44-6. Longrigg 1998 concentrates on what may be called the more theoretical parts of ancient medicine, where physical
theories and medical theories meet explicitly. The same interest is apparent in Longrigg 1993.81. Fragment quoted by Stannard in the DSB vol. 1 p. 315.
82. And simple to learn: 6 month training allegedly. See Kudlien 1970 pp. 3-37, esp. p.17.
83. He gave his own view of the major sects of his time in On the Sects for Beginners.
84. He wrote over 350 works, which vary in length from 30 to 500 pages, and the modern printed edition of the corpus (ed. Kuhn), which has only 133 works (not all of which are genuine, e.g. On Urine in vol 19) runs to 8,000 pages, Nutton WMT p. 60. Eighty or so works carry his name but were not written by him. Falsely attributed works started appearing in his own lifetime, and prompted him to write On my own books. Wilamowitz called him a windbag (Seichbeutel), Heiberg described him as "unattractive' and "offensive", and those scholars who have devoted the much time required to get to know the man through his writings seem to go off him in the process."
E.g. Kudlien in the DSB makes his point by saying that Galen may "have inherited something from his mother", whom Galen himself likened to Sokrates" wife Xanthippe, who had a reputation as a battleaxe. Nutton, who has probably read more of Galen's works than anyone else has, somewhere calls him "obnoxious". Galen seems not to have won any popularity contests in antiquity either, having no known students, and establishing no school (Galenism is a phenomenon which arises after he was dead, on which see Temkin 1973).85. Sophokles wrote a tragedy called ÔRootcuttersÕ, which is lost unfortunately. It featured Medea, perhaps the most famous witch of antiquity. The fragments of this and other lost plays by Sophokles have recently (1996) appeared in the Loeb Library.
86. Which work is described amusingly by Heiberg 1922 p. 82 as "an old curiosity shop" with "precious information" laying side by side "with all the rubbish which lay so readily to the hand of the tireless excerpter". Beagon 1992 is more kind.
87. Scarborough 1986 p. 59. The books in question are 20-32.
88. See NuttonÕs amusing characature 1985a pp. 43-4.
89. Apud Galen Compound drugs by location 1.8, 12.475-82K.
90. See e.g. Celsus 3.21.9. This for extreme and painful flatulence. Other treatments he gives for the same condition include cautery of the abdominal wall.
91. This point is made by Justin in his Epitome of Trogus' Philippic History of, 37.2.4-6. See also Tacitus Annals 14.3 on Agrippina.
92. Modern medicines can be very toxic (esp. chemotherapy) Ð the aim is to kill the bad things in the patient without killing the patient, hence the effort in modern times to make targetable drugs.
93. Digest 18.1.35.2; see also Digest 48.8, which gives full discussion of the law on sale of poisons.
94. The death penalty was automatic on conviction for: treason, certain kinds of theft including any theft by night or temple-robbing, for illegal return if exiled (and for harbouring such a person), for failing to observe some conditions of disenfranchisement, for self-prostitution for reward (applied only to citizens), and for citing a non-existent law in a court. Execution without trial was a possibility in certain cases, e.g. for 'do-badders' (kakourgoi) caught in the act of committing certain offences and confessing to the Eleven, or for a convicted murderer found in the Agora or sacred precincts; see Hansen 1976 and Harrison 1971.
95. Earlier recipes for antidotes existed in the Near East, where power was also concentrated in few hands. Some of these may go back to Assyrian times, according to Scarborough 1977 19 n. 7.
96. Especially the lost On poisonous animals and On Poisons by Apollodorus, c. C3 BC.
97. See Scarborough 1977 and 1979. Hipparchus made similar complaints about another very popular poem in antiquity: AratusÕ Phainomena, a versification of Eudoxus' astronomy, both of which Hipparchus then attempted to correct in a commentary. Being neither good astronomy nor good poetry, as Nicander's is neither good pharmacology nor good verse, AratusÕ popularity is a vivid illustration of the foreign-ness of the ancient world. Needless to say, Aratus was translated into Latin (by Cicero, Varro of Atax [not the author of De Re Rustica] and Germanicus Caesar, amongst others) and many MSS survive, whilst EudoxusÕ original and HipparchusÕ commentary were not, and exist only in fragments. The same happened with Nicander and his predecessors.
98. This arrangement of the material, and the arrangement by kind, was begun by Mantias (fl. 170 BC) in Alexandria; see von Staden Part 2 chap. 18.
99. In general on GalenÕs early years see Nutton 1973.
100. See e.g. Pliny NH 28.5: to inspect human entrails is considered sinful.
101. Diagrams of these and other surgical and cautery instruments in Jackson 1990.
102. A Roman period epitaph for a surgeon who died aged 17 (L'Ann*e ƒpigraphique 1924 p. 106) seems excessively young by modern standards.
103. Spencer trans., Loeb vol 3 p. 297. Compare Hippokrates Physician 5.
104. In a modern European hospital I had fractured and dislocated bones reduced, and severed nerves, vessels and flesh repaired, all without anaesthetics. Anaesthesia is not risk-free, even today, and it is not given to casualties with head wounds.
105. On Anatomical Procedures bks 9-15 trans. Duckworth et.al. 1962 p. 15.
106. Ptolemy II, possibly also Seleucus I. Herophilus worked at Alexandria under Ptolemy's patronage; his contemporary Erasistratus may have worked at Alexandria, or at Antioch under Seleucus'. Euclid and Ktesibios were amongst Herophilus' other contemporaries in Alexandria. On Herophilus see von Staden . On Erasistratus see Fraser 1969.
107. Some ancient wound dressings had antiseptic, antibiotic or caustic properties, e.g. wine, vinegar, or quicklime, but there was no protection against e.g. tetanus. In this context it is worth noting that Karasszon says (1988 p.55) that the practice of pouring libations onto the ashes of blood sacrifices would have produced hot potash-water, which would have disinfected the altar. If so, this was surely a happy accident for the recipients of altar-meat.
108. See e.g. Hippokrates Places in Man 40.
109. See e.g. Celsus 5.26.33-4.
110. Other uses include fixing repetitive shoulder dislocations, Hippocrates On Joints 11; treating bite wounds caused by rabid dogs, Celsus 5.27.2; burning off dead flesh e.g. Celsus 5.28.1.b; treating erosive cancers, Celsus 5.28.3.e; whitlows, Celsus 6.19.3; eye problems, e.g. Celsus 7.7.15.f-k; and gum disease, Celsus 7.12.1.
111. Public slaves in Athens had the letters DH (abbreviation for demos) branded on their foreheads, and recaptured runaways in Rome were branded on the forehead too; see e.g. Petronius Satyricon 103. Tattooing was another form of marking slaves or prisoners of war, on which see duBois 1991 chapter 7. Martial 6.64.24-6 refers to a barber called Cinnamus who specialized in
removing such marks.112. Burning off their spurs, 8.2.3. There is no reference to branding animals in Columella, and when the occasion arises that it is felt necessary to mark animals (7.9.12; sows and their piglets in this case), the use of liquid pitch is recommended.
113. 5.27.13. That this section on the treatment of burns applies to cautery in general, see 7.7.15.k.
114. In the context of cauterizing carbuncles, Celsus points out that the cauterization of dead flesh does not hurt, precisely because the flesh is dead, and that in such cases one stops cauterizing when the patient can feel it, 5.28.1.b.
115. See also Simon (a psychoanalyst with Greek and Latin) 1978.
116. However, he assumes throughout familiarity with modern Italian psychiatric technical terms, and the reader needs to recognize the context in order to turn some Anglicized Italian words into common English forms, e.g. p. 112 Tholomeus = Ptolemy. One is also given the impression that Hippocrates and other Greek authors wrote in Latin. In short, this is not a
book for beginners, but I know of no other which treats the same subject with similar range and scope.117. There is a large project underway in Munich to translate into German the Mulomedicina Chironis, the Hippiatrica and parts of the Geoponica. For discussion of this project and a good survey of recent work in veterinary history see Fischer 1988, though this understandably misses Karasszon, which was published in the same year.
118. For example, Columella states explicitly that broken legs of sheep are treated no differently from broken legs of men, 7.5.18; see also 7.10.5 (treatment for upset tummy), 7.13.2 (treatment for scab). Fischer quotes (p. 196) an author in the Hippiatrica: "it is necessary to suture the peritoneum with the same technique that doctors use on a human", and cites other cases. On the other hand, post-cauterization dressings for animals (see e.g. Columella 6.11) typically feature urine (animal or human), liquid pitch or old axle-grease, which are not normally included in recipes for application on humans. Cautery was also used more freely on animals: "Almost all bodily pains, if there is no wound, can in their early stages be better dissipated by fomentation; in the advanced stage they are treated by cauterisations and the dropping of burnt butter or goat's fat upon the place" Columella 6.12.5. At a more structural level, the common arrangement of treatments from head to foot (a capite ad calcem) reflects the usual order of human drug texts which are arranged by location of ailment.
119. See Codex Theodosius 8.5.31 (dated 15 August 370).
120. Dixon and Southern 1992 p. 224, following Lewis & Short. The OLD offers yet another idea, that it comes from vetus. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae has not yet got to V.
121. Invocation of the three together in, for example, the prayer offered up by Cato in De agricultura 141.
122. Columella 7.3.16: quare veterinariae medicinae prudens esse debet pecoris magister. Columella lived in the C1 BC.
123. See the "Note on the Obligation of Virgil to Varro" in Harrison 1913 for detailed comparisons between the two works.
124. Columella has much more to say on this subject (especially in books 6 and 7) than the other Latin agricultural authors. He also talks about fish-farming (at the end of book 8), though the only health advice seems to be to keep the water clean.
125. As with sheep (2.2.20) and goats (2.3.8), he assumes that the herdsman "keeps his prescriptions written down in a book and carries with him what he needs in the way of remedies".
126. For an overview see Hyland 1990 chapter 3.
127. For this interpretation of the riots as hooliganism, see Cameron 1976. The quote is from this work p. 278, and this episode is known as the Nika riot or revolt.
128. Text ed. E Lommatzsch, Leipzig 1903. Most are now agreed that this is the same Vegetius who wrote the Epitome of military matters; see e.g. Fischer 1988 p. 197, Milner 1996 p. xxxi-ii.
129. Text ed. K-D Fischer Leipzig 1980.
130. Text ed. E Oder, Leipzig 1901. Fischer described this as Ôundoubtedly one of the most obscure texts in the Latin languageÕ (1988 p. 203); he is working on a new edition of the text (see p. 205).
131. Text ed. H Beckh, Leipzig 1895. Books 16-19 concern animal husbandry and welfare.
132. Text ed. E Oder & C Hoppe, Leipzig 1924 (vol 1) 1927 (vol 2). Another text lacking an English translation (as far as I know), though French, German and Spanish translations of parts of versions have been available since the C16 and C17. On the differences between (and problems with) different MSS of this corpus see Doyen 1981.
References
For biology, see G E R Lloyd's works, especially Aristotelian explorations, which has an excellent recent (1996) bibliography and starts with a good discussion of changes in the interpretation of Aristotle's oeuvre by Lloyd and other scholars since the 60s. The older tradition is well introduced by Charles Singer Greek biology and medicine 1922, and D'Arcy Thompson Aristotle as biologist 1913.
For medicine, the best introduction is now L Conrad, M Neve, V Nutton, R Porter and A Wear The Western Medical Tradition CUP 1995, especially Nutton's chapters (1-3) on the ancient world. This also contains a very useful chronological table on pp. 7-9, which locates in their historical context many ancient medical writers whose names may be unfamiliar to the reader. G MajnoÕs The Healing Hand Harvard UP 1975 is a medical history written not by a scholar but by a pathologist with Greek and Latin; it reveals a pathologist's interest in the effectiveness (or otherwise) of ancient treatments, including testing the performance of some ancient drugs in laboratory experiments. It also considers Mesopotamia, Egypt and India, and is as entertaining as it is educational. More specialised works or older but still useful surveys include A J Brock Greek medicine 1929, L Edelstein Ancient Medicine 1967, M Grmek Diseases in the ancient Greek world 1989, R Jackson Doctors and diseases in the Roman empire 1988, J Longrigg Greek rational medicine 1993, E Phillips Greek medicine 1973, J Scarborough Roman medicine 1969, and O Temkin Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians 1991. One of the liveliest areas of modern work on ancient medicine, from both the methodological and the content perspectives, has been on women: methodologically because most of the ancient texts (including gynecological treatises) were written by men, not women; and in terms of content, the development of womenÕs studies and gender issues has prompted new questions and problems. L Dean-Jones Women's bodies in classical Greek science 1994 and H King Hippocrates' woman 1998 offer excellent introductions to both aspects.
T. E. Rihll
Last modified: 30 November 2001.
Introduction | Animals | Plants | Medicine, Physicians, Sects among | Veterinary | Notes
