Medicine in the Ancient Western World

Ancient medicine sometimes appears surprisingly similar to modern medicine.

At other times, it exposes what we regard as superstition and ignorance.

Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Romans asked many of the same questions about health and disease that we do today.

They developed surgical processes that endure and practiced pharmaceutical and psychiatric approaches recognizable in modern science.

Medicine in prehistory also surprises us, as we see it preserved in Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy from the Alps.

This course surveys ancient Western medicine through its cultures and pioneering individuals.

We will encounter Hippocrates, Celsus, Dioscorides, and Galen; examine Babylonian tablets and the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus ; and explore important texts, including De Materia Medica , and medical instruments preserved from Pompeii to Northern Europe.

We'll study Memphis, Babylon, Alexandria, Cos, Pergamon, and Epidaurus—places where medicine had a long tradition.

We may also further push back the threshold for preliterate medicine, as new evidence for Neanderthals in Paleolithic Spain offers clues to possible health practices from astonishing antiquity.