Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World is a book about the patients of the Graeco-Roman world, their role in the ancient medical encounters and their relationship to the health providers and medical practitioners of their time.
This volume makes a strong claim for the relevance of a patient-centred approach to the history of ancient medicine. Attention to the experience of patients deepens our understanding of ancient societies and their medical markets, and enriches our knowledge of the history of ancient cultures. It is a first step towards shaping a history of the ancient patient’s view, which will be of use not only to ancient historians, students of medical humanities, and historians of medicine, but also to any reader interested in medical ethics.
Georgia Petridou is a research associate at the Max-Weber Kolleg, University of Erfurt. She works on classical literature, history of religions and Graeco-Roman medicine in its socio-cultural context. She is the author of
Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015), and co-editor (with Richard Gordon and Jörg Rüpke) of Beyond Priesthood: Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Imperial Era (De Gruyter, 2016).
Chiara Thumiger is a research associate at Humboldt Universität (Berlin) within the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship Project ‘Medicine of the Mind – Philosophy of the body’. She has previously worked on the representation of self and mental facts in literary sources (especially tragedy) and published a monograph on Euripides’ Bacchae (Hidden paths, London 2007) as well as a various articles and chapters about tragedy. Her monograph on mental disorder in early Greek medicine, The life and health of the mind in early Greek medical ideas is forthcoming, as well as a volume (co-edited with P.N. Singer) on Medical Conceptions of Mental Illness from Celsus to Caelius Aurelianus.
Contributors are: P. Baker, L. Bolton, P. Bouras-Vallianatos, J. Draycott, G. Ecca, L. A. Graumann,, H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, P. Koetschet, J. C. Kosak, M. Letts, O. Lewis, S. P. Mattern, G. Petridou, A. Porter, K. van Schaik, M. Stolberg, C. Thumiger, C. Roby, C. Webster, J. Z. Wee and J. M. Wilkins.
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[T]he conference volume under review is the first contribution from classicists to the field of medical or health humanities, the attendant humanities perspectives used in preprofessional and professional medical education. The twenty papers collected are the most sustained discussion of the ancient evidence of humanistic topics central to contemporary medical education: patients' emotional experience, pain management, fees, patient autonomy, narrative medicine, the clinical encounter, embodiment, and confidentiality, among others." Marquis Berrey,
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.08.03.
Contents Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Notes on the Contributors
Bibliographical Note
Introduction: Towards a History of the Ancient Patient’s View
Georgia Petridou and Chiara Thumiger
Part 1 - Medical Authority and Patient Perspectives 1 “This I Suffered in the Short Space of my Life”. The Epitaph for Lucius Minicius Anthimianus (
CIG 3272; Peek
GV 1166)
Lutz A. Graumann and Manfred Horstmanshoff 2 Questioning the Patient, Questioning Hippocrates: Rufus of Ephesus and the Pursuit of Knowledge
Melinda Letts
Part 2 - Case Histories in the Hippocratic Corpus 3 Patient Function and Physician Function in the Hippocratic Cases
Chiara Thumiger 4 Case History as Minority Report in the Hippocratic
Epidemics 1
John Z. Wee 5 Voice Pathologies and the ‘Hippocratic Triangle’
Colin Webster
Part 3 - Patients and Psychological Illness 6 Galen’s Anxious Patients:
Lypē as Anxiety Disorder
Susan P. Mattern 7 Experiencing Madness: Mental Patients in Medieval Arabo-Islamic Medicine
Pauline Koetschet
Part 4 - Emotional Aspects of the Patient-Physician Relationship 8 Interpretations of the Healer’s Touch in the Hippocratic Corpus
Jennifer Kosak 9 Patience for the Little Patient: The Infant in Soranus’
Gynaecia Lesley Bolton 10 Compassion in Soranus’
Gynecology and Caelius Aurelianus’
On Chronic Diseases Amber J. Porter 11 Galen on the Patient’s Role in Pain Diagnosis: Sensation, Consensus, and Metaphor
Courtney Roby
Part 5 - Material Aspects, Diagnostic Techniques and their Impact on the Patient-Physician Relationship 12 The
Μισθάριον in the
Praecepta: The Medical Fee and its Impact on the Patient
Giulia Ecca 13 The Practical Application of Ancient Pulse-Lore and its Influence on the Patient-Doctor Interaction
Orly Lewis 14 Images of Doctors and their Implements: A Visual Dialogue between the Patient and the Doctor
Patricia A. Baker 15 Case Histories in Late Byzantium: Reading the Patient in John Zacharias Aktouarios’
On Urines Petros Bouras-Vallianatos
Part 6 - The Informed Patient: Self-Healing and the Patient as Physician 16 Treatment of the Man: Galen’s Preventive Medicine in the
De Sanitate Tuenda John M. Wilkins 17 Literary and Documentary Evidence for Lay Medical Practice in the Roman Republic and Empire
Jane Draycott 18 Aelius Aristides as Informed Patient and Physician
Georgia Petridou 19 “It may not cure you, it may not save your life, but it will help you”
Katherine D. van Schaik 20 Epilogue: Approaches to the History of Patients: From the Ancient World to Early Modern Europe
Michael Stolberg