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VI. Biology and Medicine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
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Biology and medicine form a huge area. I am treating them together because there is a very close link between all the life sciences in the ancient sources. 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’, Arion’s dolphin, Herodotos’ werewolves (4.105), people turned by gods into animals and plants, 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. People and animals could be observed to suffer from the same epidemic disease, and the same cure for X could be offered as treatment for people or animals. [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.
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1 Even linguistically: what we translate ‘body fluids’ or ‘humours’, χυμοί, can also mean fruit juice or plant sap.
2 Better known in a less literal translation as ‘man is a political animal’. Throughout this chapter 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, politai, 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 θυμός and ¿μοφρονΐω).
4 E.g. Circe’s 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 Galen’s errors derive from his superimposition of ape soft tissues on a human skeleton.
6 E.g. Thoukudides 2.50 on the Athenian plague of 430 tolling 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 1972. 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 681al0-15 (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 Aristotle’s 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 utilizing 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-vi.
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 ‘relatively’. See Davies and Kithramby pp. 16-29 for general discussion.
15 Beavis considers all primary sources up to A.D. 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 – including medicinal uses – associated with each of the invertebrates and insects covered. Davies and Kithramby are less comprehensive in the literary sources utilized and taxa covered, but they include the honey bee, discuss etymology, folklore, 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 Mediane, which started in 1954. A compilation of these up to 1977 fills 18 volumes: Subject Catalogue of the History of Mediane, 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 Severas’ time (A.D. 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 seabeasts 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 (C12 A.D.) 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 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 unfertilized eggs.
23 See especially Whether Land or Sea Animals are Cleverer (Mor. 959-85) and The Causes of Natural Phenomena (Mor. 911-19). 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 Keaveney and 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 sealife 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 A.D.
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 Thompson’s 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 ‘Ram-fishes’ of the Sardinia/Corsica area (15.2) are perhaps killer whales, Thompson s.v. крюі. 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 άσκούς. 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 ‘along 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 feet is quite possible without breathing apparatus (100 feet holding the breath is apparently routine), and that c. 300 feet is achieveable ‘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 of their normal volume, and back to the surface, on one lungful of air, in about 5 minutes. Don’t 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 aids 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 nature’s greatest diver, on the basis of their understanding of the anatomy and physiology ofthat 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 its most distinctive feature 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 669a. Theophrastos was not so sure; in On 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’ (Sharpies trans., emphasis added). Habitat, diet, and anatomy were other concerns which arose particularly with regard to animals which have a double way of life (amphibios, Demockitos’ 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 548a32-549al3. Named sponge-diving places are off the coast of Torone, Lycia, the Hellespont, and Cape Malea. Theophrastos HP cites the north coast of Crete for the same, 4.6.5. In Aristotle’s time sponges were said fry 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 5.651 (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, 1996a, 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 900 ft/300 m.
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, ‘relaxing’ in Oppian’s words.
47 See Gofmelf 1988.
48 The Theophrastos Project, under the direction of W. W. Fortenbaugh, began in 1979, and produced a fundamental two-volume work Theophrastos: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, Leiden, 1992. This work gives all texts in Greek, Latin, or Arabic with English translation of references to Theophrastos’ works from earliest times to C15 A.D. 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 Theophrastos, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903, USA.
49 The details of Theophrastos’ Last Will and Testament are given by Diogenes Laertius 5.52-5. On Pompulos, 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, fertilizers, and (as a Greek student informs me is done today in some parts of Greece) an alcoholic drink. According to Lobban and Harrison 1994 p. 283 collection of seaweed for food started in Europe c. 500 A.D., 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 ‘Carthage must be destroyed’. Varro was born ten years before Cicero in 116 B.C.; 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 recognized 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. Cominella was a native of Cadiz in Spain, living in the C1 A.D., 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 Sharpies 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 material normally used as a foundation at least since the C6 B.C. – 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 1966 pp. 167-9. Other substances used are liable to make the modern reader cringe (e.g. a woman’s 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 (e.g. human placentas, which I am told are sold by some hospitals to pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies, who want them for their hormone content). 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 A.D., CMG 9.1-2) and Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo; he completed the edition of Hero’s Opera (vols. 4 and 5), and contributed to the Catalogue des manuscrits 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 set of regulations disqualified calculatores from such tax immunities, as we saw in chapter 3 above.
62 See Nutton WMT p. 16.
63 See T238a-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 ‘rural 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 [‘to Epigenes’ has no MS authority] 1.4 (14.603-5, 620-23 K).
69 E.g. Scarborough, 1986, p. 60 (don’t 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 Celsus’ 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, pp. xvii-xxi. The lost part of Celsus’ 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 Hippocratic 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 ‘has the power to produce (a timely death) for himself 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. Hippokrates, 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 1980s.
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 Hippocratic school on Kos 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 Huphasis.
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. 3-27, 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. Falsey 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 ‘Rootcutters’, 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’ lying 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 Nutton’s amusing caricature, 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 the Philippic History of Trogus, 37.2.4-6. See also Tacitus Annals 14.3 on Agrippina.
92 Modern medicines can be very toxic (esp. chemotherapy) - 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 an exile), 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 p. 19 n. 7.
96 Especially the lost On Poisonous Animals and On Poisons by Apollodoros, c. C3 B.C.
97 See Scarborough 1977 and 1979. Hipparkhos made similar complaints about another very popular poem in antiquity: Aratos’ Phainomena, a versification of Eudoxos’ astronomy, both of which Hipparkhos then attempted to correct in a commentary. Being neither good astronomy nor good poetry, as Nicander’s is neither good pharmacology nor good verse, Aratos’ popularity is a vivid illustration of the foreignness of the ancient world. Needless to say, Aratos was translated into Latin (by Cicero, Varrò of Atax [not the author of De re rustica] and Germanicus Caesar, amongst others) and many MSS survive, whilst Eudoxos’ original and Hipparkhos’ 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 B.C.) in Alexandria; see von Staden Part 2 chapter 18.
99 In general on Galen’s 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’Année épigraphique, 1924, p. 106) seems excessively young by modern standards.
103 Spencer trans., Loeb 7.Proo.4. 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 Seleukos I. Herophilos worked at Alexandria under Ptolemy’s patronage; his contemporary Erasistratos may have worked at Alexandria, or at Antioch under Seleukos. Euclid and Ktesibios were amongst Herophilos’ other contemporaries in Alexandria. On Herophilos see von Staden. On Erasistratos 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, Hippokrates, On Joints 11; treating bite wounds caused by rabid dogs, Celsus 5.27.2; burning off dead flesh e.g. Celsus 5.28.l.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 ΔH (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 Hippokrates 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 Hippiatrika 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, Coramella 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 Hippiatrika: ‘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 cauterizations 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 Theodosianus 8.5.31 (dated 15 August 370).
120 Dixon and Southern 1992 p. 224, following Lewis and Short. Thanks to the editor for noting that 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.
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 Science; see e.g. Fischer 1988 p. 197, Milner 1996 pp. xxxi-ii.
129 Text ed. K-D. Fischer, Leipzig, 1980.
130 Text ed. E. Oder, Leipzig, 1901. Fischer described this as ‘undoubtedly one of the most obscure texts in the Latin language’ (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 and 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.