The kinesthetic diagnosis in a homeric item of pathological heartbeat: An overview in the history of ancient greek medicine.

The Iliad, by the Greek poet Homer, is a precious mine of examples of war traumatology. In the specific case of spear wounds in the chest, the death of the Trojan warrior Alcathous is particularly interesting from the point of view of the history of medicine and the evolution of cardiology and knowledge of the heart at the time of ancient Greece. In particular this paper aims to evidence and reconstruct the main anatomical and physiological knowledge of the heart at that time. Indeed, a historical-linguistic analysis of the Greek text prompts some reflections and thoughts on the heartbeat in pathological conditions and on the function of the heart as a hematopoietic organ. Furthermore, Homer's account is a critical text that highlights the relevance of the use of the senses in the ancient description of nosological pictures and it allows us an interesting and suggestive approach to reconstruction from the historical and historiographical point of view.

WHEN QUARTAN FEVER RELIEVED DEPRESSION: THE INCEPTION OF PYRETOTHERAPY IN THE GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY.

OBJECTIVE: The aim: This paper explores the documentation of the effect of quartan fever on, the ancient Greek equivalent of conditions falling nowadays under the spectrum of depression, in Greco-Roman medical sources. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Materials and methods: The authors searched original medical texts written in Greek by physicians who lived and practiced Medicine in the broader Mediterranean region from the 5th century BC to the 7th century AD for records related to quartan fever and neuropsychiatric diseases. CONCLUSION: Conclusions: Quartan fever was used as a treatment for neuropsychiatric conditions until the middle of the 20th century. Although malaria can have severe neuropsychiatric sequelae, the neuroimmunological underpinnings of the effect of fever and heat on depression warrant further investigation.

On the origins of European gynaecology: the archaeological and literary sources to the development of gynaecology in Greece before 500 BC.

The aim of this study is to prove that at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC at the latest an independent gynaecological tradition was formed within the Greek art of healing, from which the later Classical Graeco-Roman medicine drew inspiration. In this paper, the archaeological (especially the terracotta figurines and models and scenes painted on vases) and literary (the economic records and poetry excerpts) sources for the development of gynaecology from the advanced phases of the 2nd millennium until 500 BC are presented. The preserved sources clearly indicate that the Greek medicine reached some positive achievements already before 500 BC. Already in that period it put emphasis on the gynaecological issues. The described sources well illustrate also the development of the religious and mythological ideas related to the gynaecological, or the gynaecological-obstetrical aspect of healing, represented by Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, which was worshiped in the Greek world already since the Bronze Age. The Ancient Greek medicine has got the important place in the history of the European and world medical science. In the frame of medicine of the period in question, it is possible to trace back to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC the specific healing-gynaecological tradition, with an emphasis on the obstetrics. In this tradition, a combination of rational, empirical and religious aspects was used. The terracotta models from the 9th-8th centuries BC point on the widely used practice of midwifery, too. Unfortunately, it is not possible to clearly discern if the midwifes existed already before 500 BC as a specific and independent medical occupation.

Specific urogenital disease information-revealing male genital votive offerings dedicated to gods in ancient age sanctuary medicine / Información en los votivos de órganos genitales masculinos sobre enfermedades urogenitales, en las ofrendas a dioses en la antigua medicina para la sanación

OBJECTIVES: The people of ancient age appealed to sanctuaries of different gods and goddesses they believed to have healing powers and consecrated anatomical votive offerings representing their sick or healed organs. Male genital organ votives were also present among these votives. In this article, male genital organ votive offerings presented to gods and goddesses were examined and the votives giving information about the diseases they indicated were revealed in contemporary medicine. METHODS: Information available in written resources on ancient medicine and diseases was reviewed. Main sanctuary healing centers in Anatolia (Asia Minor), Greece and Italy which concurrently hosted similar civilizations were investigated. Male genital organ shaped anatomical votive samples in national and foreign medical history and archaeology museums, galleries and special collections were investigated and examined. RESULTS: It was observed that most male genital organ votives had a healthy and normal structure and didn’t provide any specific information on a urogenital disease. But it was also observed that some votives among genital organ votives consecrated by sick individuals to gods demonstrated some urogenital diseases and conditions. Among this very limited number of genital votives providing disease information, votives indicating phimosis, hypospadias, varicocele, penile hemangioma or condylama, Peyronie’s disease or penile curvature, genital hidradenitis suppurativa, condition of pubic hair and erectile condition of penis were detected. CONCLUSIONS: As proofs of seeking a remedy for diseases or recovering from diseases, anatomical organ votives are very important to understand ancient sanctuary medicine. Among male genital organ votives, very limited number of samples providing specific information on diseases provided us important information so that we can understand some ancient age diseases

OBJETIVOS: Los habitantes de la era antigua acudían a santuarios de distintos dioses con la creencia de que éstos tenían poderes curativos y les entregaban ofrendas votivas de partes anatómicas enfermas, bien para que fueran sanados o como ofrenda una vez sanados. Entre estas ofrendas votivas encontramos órganos reproductores masculinos. En este artículo se han revisado y examinado estas ofrendas votivas de órganos reproductores masculinos y de ello se ha podido obtener información sobre enfermedades que existen en la medicina contemporánea. MÉTODOS: La información presente en escritos de medicina ancestral y enfermedades se revisó. Los principales santuarios de sanación en Anatolia (Asia Menor), Grecia e Italia que de forma concurrente tuvieron diferentes civilizaciones, fueron investigadas. La forma del órgano genital masculino en muestras votivas de historia de la medicina nacional y extranjera, museos arqueológicos, galerías y colecciones especiales, fueron investigadas y examinadas. RESULTADOS: Se observa que la mayoría de votivos de órganos genitales masculinos tenían una forma natural y sana y no proporcionaban ninguna información especial respecto a enfermedades urogenitales. Aunque también se observó que algunos votivos de individuos enfermos a dioses si presentaban algunas enfermedades urogenitales y condiciones especiales. Entre los votivos enfermos, encontramos votivos con fimosis, hipospadias, varicocele, hemangioma peneanos y condilomas, enfermedad de Peyronie o curvatura peneana, hidradenitis genital supurativa, desarrollo de pelo púbico y condiciones eréctiles del pene. CONCLUSIONES: Como prueba del interés por encontrar un remedio a las enfermedades o recuperarse de enfermedades, los votivos de órganos anatómicos fueron muy importantes para entender la medicina antigua. Entre todas estas ofrendas votivas de órganos genitales, a pesar de que un número muy limitado de ellas nos ha proporcionado información concreta sobre enfermedades, la información obtenida en ellas ha sido crucial para entender algunas de las enfermedades de la edad antigua

Milestones in the History of Pediatric Surgery During the Byzantine Times.

During the Byzantine Times, medicine and surgery developed as Greek physicians continued to practice in Constantinople. Healing methods were common for both adults and children, and pediatrics as a medical specialty did not exist. Already Byzantine hospitals became institutions to dispense medical services, rather than shelters for the homeless, which included doctors and nurses for those who suffered from the disease. A major improvement in the status of hospitals as medical centers took place in this period, and physicians were called archiatroi. Several sources prove that archiatroi were still functioning in the late sixth century and long afterward, but now as xenon doctors. Patients were averse to surgery due to the incidence of complications. The hagiographical literature repeated allusions to doctors. Concerns about children with a surgical disease often led parents to seek miraculous healings achieved by Christian Protectors - Saints. This paper is focused on three eminent Byzantine physicians and surgeons, Oribasius, Aetius of Amida, Paul of Aegina, who dealt with pediatric operations and influenced the European Medicine for centuries to come. We studied historical and theological sources in order to present a comprehensive picture of the curative techniques used for pediatric surgical diseases during the Byzantine Times.

The relevance of Xenophon's Anabasis and Plato's Meno to nursing.

The current situation in which the humanities are disparaged affects all university disciplines, including nursing, in whose historical evolution the humanities have always been present in one form or another. Looking beyond this disrepute, this study proposes that nursing renew its attention to classical philosophy. Specifically, it invites a close reading of Xenophon's Anabasis and Plato's Meno, to get three related goals: to show how the use of ancient texts are very valuable tools for the philosophical initiation of nursing students and can help them reflect on their choice of nursing as a practical activity; to reflect on the problem of virtue and the nature of the good life; and to show how the interaction with ancient texts allows students to reflect on questions and issues of life, theirs and others, that are not open to investigation through a purely scientific method. Consequently, both Anabasis and Meno readings strengthen the intellectual relationship between philosophy and nursing, enabling the latter to delve deeper into the key questions of its own thought as a discipline.

Hippocratic concepts of acute and urgent respiratory diseases still relevant to contemporary medical thinking and practice: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: The collected works of Hippocrates were searched for concepts on the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of acute and urgent respiratory diseases, with the objective to trace their origins in the Hippocratic Collection. METHODS: A scoping review was performed to map out key concepts of acute and severe respiratory diseases in the entire Hippocratic Collection. The digital library Thesaurus Lingua Graeca (TLG) was researched for references in the entire Hippocratic Collection regarding the epidemiology, pathophysiology, prognosis, diagnosis and treatment of acute respiratory diseases; then, the relevant texts were studied in their English translation by the Loeb Classical Library. RESULTS: Hippocratic physicians followed principles of treatment for pneumonia and pleurisy, still relevant, such as hydration, expectoration, analgesia and prompt mobilisation. Other approaches, including the inhalation of "vapours through tubes" in angina, can be considered as forerunners of modern medical practice. Thoracic empyema was diagnosed by shaking the patient and direct chest auscultation after "applying your ear to his sides". In case of an emergency from upper airway obstruction, urgent insertion of primitive airway equipment, such as a small pharyngeal tube, was applied. CONCLUSIONS: The main Hippocratic concepts on four still common acute and urgent respiratory diseases -pneumonia, pleurisy, thoracic empyema and upper airway obstruction- were identified and most of them were found to be in agreement with contemporary medical thinking and practice.

Using city gates as a means of estimating ancient traffic flows.

Despite the recent flurry of interest in various aspects of ancient urbanism, we still know little about how much traffic flowed in and out of ancient cities, in part because of problems with using commodities as proxies for trade. This article investigates another approach, which is to estimate these flows from the built environment, concentrating on transport infrastructure such as city gates. To do this, I begin by discussing a new model for how we would expect this kind of infrastructure to expand with population, before investigating the relationship between the populations of sites and the total numbers and widths of city gates, focusing on the Greek and Roman world. The results suggest that there is indeed a systematic relationship between the estimated populations of cities and transport infrastructure, which is entirely consistent with broader theoretical and empirical expectations. This gives us a new way of exploring the connectivity and integration of ancient cities, contributing to a growing body of general theory about how settlements operate across space and time.

THE TERMINAL APHONIA OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, A SILENT HERALD OF AN ORDINARY DEATH. / TERMINALNA AFONIJA ALEKSANDRA VELIKOG, TIHOGA GLASNIKA OBICNE SMRTI

Even though the absence of the body prevents sure conclusions, the death of Alexander the Great remains a hot topic of retrospective diagnosis. Due to the serious mishandling of ancient sources, the scientific literature had Alexander dying of every possible natural cause. In previous works, the hypothesis that typhoid fever killed Alexander was proposed, based on the presence of the remittent fever typical of this disease in the narrations of Plutarch and Arrian. Here we provide additional evidence for the presence of stupor, the second distinctive symptom of typhoid fever. In fact, based on the authority of Caelius Aurelianus and Galen, we demonstrate that the word ἄφωνος, used to describe the last moments of Alexander, is a technical word of the lexicon of the pathology of Hippocrates. Used by him, the word defines a group of diseases sharing a serious depression of consciousness and motility. The association of stupor with the remittent fever strengthens the typhoid fever hypothesis.

The footprints of neuroscience in Alexandria during the 3rd-century BC: Herophilus and Erasistratus.

In the first half of the 3rd-century BC in Alexandria, the Greek physicians Herophilus of Chalcedon (ca. 330 to ca. 260 BC) and Erasistratus of Chios (ca. 315 to ca. 240 BC) became the first scientists in antiquity to comprehensively study the anatomical underpinnings and the physiological properties of mind processes. Their scientific theories were based on experimental evidence arising from anatomical human dissection studies. Among their neuroscientific achievements were the discovery of the cranial nerves, the meninges, the dural sinuses and the ventricles; the delineation of the motor and sensory nerves; the appraisal of the brain as the seat of consciousness and human intellect; and the attribution of neurological disease to dysfunction of the nervous system. This paper will discuss the short-lived historical circumstances that enabled the ground-breaking progress in the domain of brain sciences during the Hellenistic period. In addition, this paper will examine the intriguing social, political and cultural interplays that determined the resonance of Herophilus and Erasistratus's work and influenced the course of history of neuroscience.

Scatological Asklepios: The Use of Excrement in Graeco-Roman Healthcare.

In the classical world, "official" rationalistic medicine made therapeutic use of excrement, urine and other substances that modern humans normally regard as repulsive (this was even true of Galen, the culminating authority); and popular medicine seems to have done so on a large scale. Such practices, which finally lost their professional though not their popular acceptability in the 18th century, have been studied to good purpose by other historians, but they have never been explained in a satisfactory fashion, partly because the relevant evidence is highly diverse. The present paper, by considering the long term (pre-Greek as well as Greek and Roman) and all the relevant contexts, including ancient feelings of disgust and the general state of ancient pharmacology, and by probing people's subconscious motives, attempts to establish a multi-factor explanation. This explanation balances traditions, beliefs about the inherent qualities, physical and magical, of natural substances, and the psychological needs of both healers and the sick.

The Influence of Gondeshapur Medicine during the Sassanid Dynasty and the Early Islamic Period.

The development of the most active period of Persian medicine occurred in the ancient city of Gondeshapur, between the third and seventh centuries. Rebuilt between 256 and 260 by Shapur I, the second Sassanid monarch, Gondeshapur is said to have welcomed the first hospital and the consequent study of medicine, mainly based on the Greek system. It has also been mentioned that these teachings would be expanded by his successor, Shapur II. However, both statements need solid confirmation. Nestorian priests-professors and other academics expelled from the Byzantine Empire gave fundamental encouragement to cultural and medical development in Gondeshapur. With Khosrow I, Gondeshapur became a cosmopolitan city with studies of medicine, philosophy, eloquence, and music. The medical studies were conducted in an academic setting, and practiced in a hospital, with the documentary support of a library which would be provided with the main texts, mainly of Greek, Syrian, and Indian origin. The Byzantine-inspired hospital system of Gondeshapur with its own management, organic system, and differentiated personnel, was later reproduced in several cities of the Middle East and medieval Europe under Islamic rule. The academic prestige and functionality of Gondeshapur, which peaked in the seventh century, began to decline in the following centuries apparently due to the creation of similar intellectual and hospital centres in Baghdad, by the Caliph al-Mansur, and the subsequent transfer of doctors, technicians, professors and other personnel from Gondeshapur, to ensure there the operation of hospitals and also medical studies. This cultural policy was continued and expanded by al-Mansur successors, in particular by the Caliph al-Ma'mun, until the tenth century.