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
Prerequisite
Any HIST course or ENGL 1101 or ENGL 1101E or ENGL 1101S or ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or ENGL 1102S or POLS 1101 or POLS 1101E or POLS 1101H or POLS 1101S
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about medicine and healing in antiquity by gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of medicine, healing, and the body in Ancient Greece and Rome has shaped social and cultural identities and attitudes toward science, medicine, and health, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to generate their own research question or topic, locate suitable primary and secondary sources, and synthesize their ideas in novel ways.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to initiate, manage, complete, and evaluate their independent research projects in stages and to give and receive constructive feedback through the peer review process.
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.
Institutional Competencies
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
Communication
The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
