SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Attitudes to suicide differ between societies, and also change with time. 104 items of ancient art that show suicide have been examined and catalogued. These icons, the most distinctive of which are discussed here, confirm the view suggested by literary sources that in the Graeco-Roman world self-killing was preferably seen as a deliberate, resolute, and heroic act.
Death and corpse were incompatible with god's and family doctor's presence in the Greek-Roman world. This incompatibility between life and the death was surmounted by the admittance of Saints' bodies in the Churches and believers' burial "ad Sanctos". From this, to body's utilization as discloser of the "causae morborum" the way was relatively short, culminating in the stage marked by Morgagni's name.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Antiquity has been considered the cradle of western civilization, including medicine. The role of diseases in the course of history has been stressed by several authors during the last few decades. The aim of this study is to survey the occurrence of diseases in antiquity. There are many obstacles to the study of the occurrence of diseases during antiquity. The most serious problem is the lack of reliable sources. Mostly we have to rely on written sources. Sometimes it is possible to supplement them with archaeological findings (e.g. bones and mummies). The defective sources give an unrealistically static picture of the occurence of diseases. Diseases must be seen as a dynamic relationship between populations and their environment. There is evidence suggesting great secular and regional variations in the occurrence of diseases during antiquity. Micro-organisms were by far the most serious threat to human health. We can be convinced that some diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, cancer, trauma, etc, occurred during antiquity. Available sources do not, however, permit estimation of the frequency of these conditions in different populations and time periods. We have information of the occurrence of large-scale epidemics during antiquity, e.g. the plague of Athens (431-426 B.C.), the plague of Antonines (about 165-180 A.D.) and the plague of Cyprian (about 251-266 A.D.). However, the first definitely identified large epidemic (bubonic plague) was the plague of Justinian (starting in 542 A.D.).
The thought of Aristotle has stamped itself on the whole subsequent course of Natural philosophy including the philosophy of healing art since the 4th century B. C. He is known to be the great codifier of ancient Natural philosophy. He developed coherent theories of generation and functional morphology of animals and heredity in his treaties. Aristotle dissected about 70 species of animals and founded the basis of comparative Anatomy.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
This is the first in a series of vignettes about health, disease and care giving practices in the ancient worlds of Greece (1000 BC-100 BC) and Rome (1st AD-500 AD). Attention is directed to what the better known conditions were, what structures existed for the delivery of care, what the commonly held health beliefs were, who the most likely care attendants were and what psych-cultural changes occurred which brought about improvements in health care. Thus the series is about the early origins and development of the Western cultural tradition of health care practices. They demonstrate that there was a recognised community need for health care structures to exist and that the association between healing and religious belief began very early.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Dentistry was surely practiced in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Etruria, Greece and Rome, but odontology arose only with the dawn of Greek science. One may find the first references to a rational odontology only in the fragments of the Pre-socratic philosophers and in the Corpus Hippocraticum. Aristotle was the first to treat odontology under a comparative anatomo-physiological point of view. Celsus and Scribonius Largus got their matter from Hippocrates, Aristotle, the Hellenistic anatomists as well as from folk-traditions, but payed attention rather to dentistry than to odontology. Finally Galen gathered all the knowledge about odontology and dentistry from Hippocrates up to the Hellenistic anatomists and organized all the matter in his monumental teleologic and theological system, that was inherited by both the so called iatrosophists and the Byzantine physicians.