Classics 250 - Week 2 Lecture + Reading Material

Early Greek approaches to illness

1. the “irrational:” cures based on myth

2. the rational

Pandora’s jar

an “irrational” explanation to the causes of illness based on a myth.

• story of Pandora’s jar provides a mythological explanation for the origin of disease

• Pandora unleashed all evils (plagues, poxes, vermin, etc.) by opening the jar

Apollo and Artemis irrational illness causes

• arrows of the god Apollo were believed to cause plagues

• those of his sister, Artemis, could also strike people dead

Asclepius

Greek god of medicine; believed to cure ailments. Other deities, including his children were also believed to cure disease

rational approach to illness

• there are observable causes for some ailments, and they can be treated

• there are understandable causes for other illness; we just don’t know them yet

• actual cures for illness: treatment by physicians (and early psychology)

early Greek approaches to illness summarized

• irrational and rational beliefs about illness and healing co-existed

  • the balance shifted over time from irrational to rational as more discoveries about diseases/ailments and their cures were discovered

What is an inflected language?

A language in which words change their endings to indicate their function in the sentence. Sometimes words even change their entire forms

What languages inflect?

Most languages inflect to at least a small extent (ex: verbs)

Importance of inflection to medical terminology

• Greek and Latin are inflected languages

• Word endings change

• Stems (combining forms) often have more than one form

Declension

When nouns and adjectives inflect

conjugation

when verbs inflect

What is declension?

the pattern of inflections for different nouns and adjectives

What is the “third declension”?

A Greek declension in which one form usually ends in -t

Earliest Greek descriptions of doctors in ancient Greece (Homer, Iliad (8th c. BCE)

• Epic poem about war (not a medical treatise)

• described medical ideas and practices

• described army doctors

• doctor treated wounds, used soothing drugs

• word for doctor/healer: iatros (cf. English pediatrician)

• very little religion; mostly practical treatment

Two specific doctors in the Iliad said to be sons of Asclepius that were expert surgeons/medics and possessed highly effective healing herbs

1. Machaon

2. Podalirius

Earliest Greek descriptions of doctors (general)

• doctors were considered traveling craftsmen

• skilled at their jobs, required training

• sometimes official court doctors for rulers

• may have exchanged ideas with Egypt, Babylonia

• may have traded medicinal ingredients

• doctors were often philosophers

Why were doctors often philosophers?

In the Archaic period of Ancient Greece, the concept of “philosophy” encompassed a very wide range of thought: not just consideration of ethics/morals, the nature of the souls, and topics like that, but also “natural science-” in how the world works, what is everything in the world made of (ex: a combination of four elements), and the like. So doctors were basically scientists.

What were some of the most common types of wounds described in the Iliad?

Battle wounds: arrows, spear thrusts, sword wounds, sling-shots

Did people in the Iliad rely mainly on prayer to gods for cures, or did they have a more practical approach? What aspect of trauma might prayer have helped with?

They had a more practical approach: there were army medics/healers that could assist with treating physical wounds. Praying was done for psychological comfort while getting their wounds treated. Both aspects were important.

Which type of injury was most easily treatable, and what did the treatment consist of?

Arrow wound - bandaging, compresses, methods of stopping bleeding and of curing wounds with balm, and to medicines made of herbal extracts

In the Iliad excerpt provided about Melenaus’s wound, what details in the poem do the article’s authors find most relevant or useful in terms of providing information about healing in early Greece?

• Machaon removed the arrow and “sucked out” the wound (which means he presumably cleaned it somewhow).

• Clear description of battle wound - he’s shot in the hip

• Compression

Briefly explain the origin of the word migraine, including the original Greek prefixes and combining forms.

The word migraine originally comes from the word hemicranium, which can be broken down into hemi-crani-um. Hemi- is a prefix that means "half or partial," crani- is a word stem for "skull," and -um is a general suffix (noun), so the original word literally meant half of the skull, as migraines (typically) occur only on one half of your head/skull.

Briefly give one specific example of how the Iliad provides information about early Greek treatment of wounds

In the Iliad, King Menelaus is shot with an arrow, and the physician Machaon removes the arrow, sucks out the blood, and applies a salve. This demonstrates that the Greek did clean out wounds and used salves to try to relieve pain and/or heal wounds faster. This also provides evidence that arrow wounds were considered treatable.

Briefly give one example of an early Greek mythological explanation for disease

An irrational or mythical explanation for disease is the story of Pandora’s jar, where Pandora releases all evils into the world, including disease, and that is one reason why early ancient Greeks believed illness occurred.

Briefly explain what connecting vowels are and why they are linguistically necessary in some words, such as erythrocyte

Connecting vowels are vowels that can be found in between word stems (or in between a word stem and prefix of the next part of the word) of certain combinations. They are usually needed when one stem ends with a consonant and the next one begins with a consonant, and this is added to increase linguistic ease of saying such words.

Briefly explain why Greek and Latin ended up as the main language used to create medical terminology. (Note: be sure you are answering this question directly rather than giving an entire history of the English language).

During the late centuries BCE/early centuries AD, Greek and Latin were two of the main languages that were spreading across Europe, especially into Britain, which eventually made a lot of early English words that were derived from these languages, and Greek and Latin were known as more scholarly languages. Medicine has been seen as a scholarly profession for a long time, and medicine needed a special, universal, static, language that would make the synthesis of medical words easier, which is why Greek and Latin ended up being used for medical words.