Medicine in the Ancient World

Helen King: 

“So you’ve got your basic level doctor who may be a ex-slave, a Greek ex-slave, lots of Greeks doing medicine in the Roman world, who could probably cope with things like skin disorders, you know, would know some salves that you could put on to soothe the skin. I think I’d be quite happy with a Roman salve probably. The eye salves, there’s so many of them, but again, if you put something sort of soothing and gooey onto the eye, it might well make it feel a lot better. I’d feel happy there. But if you got to something where it’s really serious and there’s lots of loss of blood or symptoms that you really can’t see anything outside the body, you’re having to use your imagination as to what’s happening inside, I’d be slightly more worried with your average doctor there.

However, at the top end of the hierarchy, you’ve got someone like Galen, greatest doctor in the Roman world. That’s what he tells us about himself. And I think he has to be right. Doctor to the emperors, doctor to the Roman elite in the second century AD.

And this is a guy who’s more like a medical detective. He’s the Sherlock Holmes of his day. You know, he’ll spot the signs. He’ll read the symptoms. He’ll take complete control of the case and he’ll turn it around. And someone like that, it’s not just about applying a remedy like a salve or something. It’s much more about this holistic. Let’s look at your whole lifestyle. Let’s think about who you are, how you are, all the different things that have happened in your past.

So weighing all that up. And I think that would give you huge confidence. And again, I suspect that confidence is a really important aspect. You think placebo effect. Think about people who believe the doctor is going to make them better. And that is genuinely stimulating something in the body that improves the immune system, helps the healing process.

I think confidence is something I’d want to get from my ancient doctor. And I suspect I’d get that more from someone like an elite doctor like Galen than I would from your average medicus.”

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