Ancient Greek Medicine

Griechische Medizin


Asclepius

Δύσκολος ἰατρὸς ἑτερόφθαλμος ἠρώτα νοσοῦντα· πῶς ἔχεις; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· ὁς βλέπεις. ὁ δὲ ἰατρὸς ἔφη· ἐὰν ὡς ἐγὼ βλέπω ἔχηις, τὸ ἥμυσύ σου ἀπέθανεν. An ancient Greek joke. A physician with only one eye asks a patient about his condition. The patient answers : As you see! The physician replies: Then half of you is dead. Philogelos

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis,One if not the longest word to appear in standard English dictionaries for a disease caused by ultra-microscopic particles of sandy volcanic dust (or is it better to call it Pneumonohypermicroscopicopsammohephaestiokoniosis?)

Ancient Greek medicine played an important role for almost 1500 years. Galen was probably the most important Physician of all time and his collected work includes around 20000 pages of text. Only with Vesalius and others around 1600 AD the knowledge again was improved.

Nobody knew what was the illness of the young Prince Antiochus until the famous Greek physician Erasistratus observed the typical symptoms of Sappho

Artemidorus, Sigmund Freud and Socrates Dream , Women's Dreams in Ancient Greece, The Characters of Theophrastos

Oedipus (from Loxias) , Ancient Greece Psychology Links