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[German version] Greek physician, head of an Erasistratean school in Smyrna, early 1st cent. BC (Str. 12,8,20); he wrote on  dietetics (Plin. HN 14,130; 20,35; 27,31), embryology (Tert. De anima 25) and toothache (Plin. HN 12,40). He was the inventor of a famous black plaster that ‘helped with all types of wounds’ (Gal. 13,787). Galen, who recorded four different recipes for this medication (13,780; 787; 810; 812) and cites the four authors ( Andromachus [5] the Younger,  Heras,  Heraclides [27] a…

[English version] One of the first official acts of the World Medical Association, founded in 1947, was drafting the Geneva Declaration (GD), a contemporary reformulation of the Hippocratic Oath; further improvements were made in 1968. The so-called abortion paragraph and the ban on surgery made way for more modern general provisions to respect human life from the moment of conception and always to use medical knowledge in harmony with the laws of humanity. It retained mention of a doctor's obliga…

[German version] (πυρετός/ pyretós, Lat. febris) strictly refers to a symptom only, i.e. a raise in body temperature, but all ancient medical authors frequently use this term to refer to a specific illness or class of illness. In modern diagnostic usage, the term covers a variety of conditions; thus the identification of any ancient ‘fever’ without any further sub-classification or other description of symptoms is bound to fail. Such aids to identification could consist of observations regarding the periodicity of fever attacks, as in the febris tertiana or febris quartana, when epi…

[German version] from Marseilles ( Massalia), physician, who came to Rome in the time of Nero (Plin. HN. 29,9). He gained renown when he combined astronomy with medicine by orienting the diet plans for his patients according to the course of the stars. When he died, he left 10 million sesterces after having already spent the same sum on repairing the walls and other defences in his native town. Nutton, Vivian (London)

[German version] (Δημοκήδης; Dēmokḗdēs) of Croton. Greek physician, lived about 500 BC and according to Hdt. 3,125 was the best physician of his age. He was the son of Calliphon and practised in Croton before going to Aegina. After a year the town of Aegina employed him for one talent as the community's physician but a year later he moved to Athens for a higher salary and finally into the service of Polycrates of Samos who paid two talents. After Polycrates' assassination D. was taken as a slave to…

[German version] (σφυγμός/ sphygmós, Latin pulsus). Although a pounding pulse was long recognized as an indication of illness, it seems to have been Aristotle [6] (Hist. an. 521a; De respiratione 479b) who was the first to connect the phenomenon with the heart [1]. His assertion that the pulse was a normal, constant presence in all blood vessels was disproved by Praxagoras, who was able to show that only arteries had a pulse. His view that arteries contained only pneûma and functioned independent of the heart was in turn questioned by his pupil Herophil…

[German version] (Καλλιάναξ; Kalliánax). Doctor, adherent of  Herophilus [1] and member of his ‘house’, which possibly refers to the fact that he worked in the mid 3rd cent. BC [1].  Bacchius [1] in his memoir on the early followers of Herophilus (Galen in Hippocratis Epidemiarum 6 comment. 4,10 = CMG V 10,2,2,203), mentions that C. quoted Homer and the Greek tragic writers if his patients told him that they were afraid of dying. He gave them to understand by this that only the immortals could esca…

[German version] (Ἄκρων; Ákrōn) [of Acragas] Son of a doctor of the same name (Diog. Laert. 8,65), older contemporary of Hippocrates. He was supposed to have rid Athens of the pest by lighting big fires in 430 BC (Plut. De Is. et Os. 80 [cf. 1]). The  Empiricists (Ps.-Gal. 14,638) considered A. as founder of their school and as such he entered the doxographic tradition [2]. It is possible that he participated in the debates regarding the epistemological value of sensory perception (he was familiar …

[German version] Greek physician, mid 5th cent. BC. The story recounted in Sor. Vita Hipp. 5, that E. cured Perdiccas II of Macedonia of an illness caused by unrequited love, arose comparatively late and is rather fantastical. According to Galen (17a,886), he provided the most important contributions to the so-called ‘Cnidian Sentences’, which have survived only in fragments [1. 65-66; 2. 14-26]. In the opinion of some ancient scholars some of his works, especially those dealing with dietetics, were taken up into the Hippocratic Corpus (Gal. 6,473; 7,960; 16,3). E. regarded disea…

[German version] In Late Antiquity in Alexandria [1] writings by Galenus and to a lesser extent by Hippocrates [6] were assembled into a medical compendium. Known as the '16 Books of Galen', it covers the basic areas of medicine  (including anatomy, physiology and therapeutics). According to Arab sources [1], a number of teachers ( Iatrosophistḗs ) in Alexandria are supposed to have written a series of summaries or abridgements of the books contained in this compendium, which were then collected under the title SA and translated into Arabic and perhaps also into Hebrew [2]. In…

[German version] (Φιλάγριος; Philágrios). Doctor from Epirus, fl. 3rd-4th cents. AD; he practised in Thessalonica and was the author of more than 70 books: treatises on dietetics, gout, dropsy and rabies as well as a commentary on Hippocrates [1]. He is often cited by later authors, especially in Arabic, for his treatment of diseases of the liver and spleen. Doctrinally, he often follows Galen, but pays particular attention to pneuma (Pneumatists) as the co-ordinating force in organisms. His name appears often in garbled form as Filaretus (e.g. frr. 131-133: Rhazes, Continens, V…

[German version] An eye disease characterized by exudation, covering a variety of specific diseases like trachoma and conjunctivitis. A dry variety of lippitudo, xerophthalmía, in which the purulent eyes become stuck shut over night is also described (Celsus, De medicina 6,6,29). Celsus [7] (ibid. 6,6,2) reports a large number of ointments and other agents against lippitudo, an extremely common condition; this is confirmed by many ‘oculists' stamps’ for eye ointments ( Kollyrion) with the inscriptions ‘against lippitudo’ and by the large number of manufacturers of such …

[German version] [1] Doctor Doctor and iatrosophist, who as Jew was expelled from Alexandria in c. AD 412, converted to Christianity in Constantinople and returned to Alexandria. Author of an abridged version of the Physiognomy of  Polemon of Laodicea, (ed. R. Förster 1893). Some prescriptions, which are ascribed to him, are handed down by Oribasius (Syn. ad Eustathium 2,58-59; 3,24-25; 9,57). He is probably not the author of the treatise ‘About the Winds’, Ed. V. Rose 1864), which refers to Peripatetic meteorology and apparently dates from the 3rd cent. AD.  …

[German version] According to Varro [2] (Rust. 2,1,19) derived from Latin volvere, 'roll', by which is meant the swathing of a fetus. In the early Imperial Period, vulva, like matrix, was used in addition to the technical term uterus as a term for the womb [1]. All three terms remained in use throughout Antiquity; in late Latin medical authors, vulva seldom occurs. In the course of time the term changed in meaning, in that it also included the vagina (Celsus, De medicina 4,1,12) and even the clitoris (Iuv. 6,129). In his Etymology (Isid. Orig. 11,1,137), Isidorus [9] of Seville connec…

[German version] (ἀρχιατρός; archiatrós). In the original use of the name during Hellenistic times, archiatros was the title of the king's personal physician. The term first appeared in connection with the Seleucids (IDelos 1547, cf. TAM V 1,689). A similar title, wr sinw, ‘supreme physician’, is documented in pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian texts; it is missing from early Ptolemaic papyri purely by accident. Dating to 50 BC, documentations are extant from Egypt (Athenagoras, SB 5216) and Pontus (IDelos 1573) [2. 218-226]. A physician known at t…

[German version] (πνευματικοί/ pneumatikoí, Latin pneumatici). Greek medical sect, founded by Athenaeus [6] of Attaleia under the influence of Stoicism. Galen (De causis contentivis 2) makes Athenaeus a pupil of Posidonius [2], which might indicate a date in the latter half of the 1st cent. BC. However, Cornelius Celsus [7] who wrote in Rome in the mid-1st cent. AD, seems not to have been aware of this sect at all, and its most famous representatives - Agathinus, Herodotus [3], Antyllus [2] and Archi…

[German version] (also Muscio) Translator and adapter into Latin of two gynaecological treatises by  Soranus of Ephesus.One of these, now lost in Greek, was a shorter manual of questions and answers; the second the celebrated Gynaikeîa (‘Gynaecology). Some MSS of M.'s compendium end with an appendix listing vaginal pessaries. Although not a faithful translation of Soranus, M.'s adaptation does offer help in the constitution of the Greek text, and it was the most popular treatise on gynaecology to survive from Antiquity into the …

[German version] (Ἀρχιγένης; Archigénēs) of Apamea. Physician, student of  Agathinus, lived under Trajan (AD 98-117) and died at the age of 63 (Suda s. v. Archigenes). He was an eclecticist and had close ties to the Hippocratic view that disease is caused by the dyscrasia of hot, cold, moist and dry. A. was predominantly influenced by the Pneumatists and wrote extensively about the study of the pulse. Galen (8,625-635) criticized his list of eight different pulse qualities as too tenuous. Some of t…

[German version] (Ἀγαθῖνος; Agathînos) of Sparta (Ps.-Gal. 19,353). Greek doctor of the first cent., student of Athenaeus of Attaleia, teacher of Archigenes and the Pneumatist  Herodotus. Even though he was mostly counted among the Pneumatists, some believed that he had founded his own, the Episynthetic or Eclectic School. The handed-down fragments of his writings allow connections to the Empiricists and Methodists to be recognized. He wrote about medicines (a fragment about stinking hellebore is i…

[German version] Military doctor, who according to Lucian (Quomodo historia 16,24 = FGrH II 210), wrote, in a highly tragic and stilted style, a history of the Parthian Wars of Lucius Verus in the years AD 162-166 that bore the title Parthica. Unless this was a figment of Lucian's imagination, it appears that he served in the Parthian War, either in the legio VI Ferrata, or in an ala contariorum (a troop division of pike-bearers). Nutton, Vivian (London)