Course Description
The origins of the rationalist tradition in medicine; folk and cult methods of healing; the medical construction of gender differences; attitudes toward the body, including asceticism; and topics in the social history of medicine (such as childbirth, disease, and medical society) will be explored.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Research term paper; presentation to class and/or leading class discussion.
Athena Title
ANCIENT MEDICINE
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The objectives of this course are to introduce students to the very great variety of thought and belief about healing and the body in antiquity; to introduce them to different sources of evidence for ancient health and healing; and to encourage them to think about how medical texts and similar sources can shed light on the everyday realities of life in the ancient world. Further objectives include developing skills in reading and interpreting primary sources, in the critical interpretation of secondary sources, and in writing. Graduate students will also receive training in research techniques. Assignments will probably include daily reading assignments, weekly short writing assignments, and a series of short papers. The principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
This course would explore the Greek rationalist tradition of medicine, but also folk and cult methods of healing, including the cult of Asclepius, the miracles of the New Testament, and Roman traditional medicine. Other themes would include ancient attitudes toward the body, including the phenomena of asceticism and martyrdom; medical constructions of gender differences; and medical texts as sources for social history, including such issues as the medical treatment of women, childbirth, medical society as described by Galen, and disease in antiquity. There may also be some discussion of medicine as metaphor, especially in Greek tragic or philosophical works. Texts would include selections from the Hippocratic corpus, Thucydides' account of the plague, Plato's Timaeus, Cato's treatise On Agriculture, Pliny's Natural History, Soranus' Gynecology, Galen's On Pognosis, Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales, the Gospels and other hagiographical works, and Roman and Christian martyrologies. Material culture sources would also be introduced, including medical instruments, the epitaphs of doctors, and the vast archaeological and epigraphical material on the Asclepius cult.