Medical Ethics Midterm

Bronze Age Greece

3000-1200 BC, collapse of Mycenaeans, mask of Agamemnon and funeral scenes showing proper burials, the idea of death, and your legacy when you are living

Mycenae

the city home to the Mycenaeans from the Bronze Age who were the first Greek-speaking civilization who had fortified cities, legend of the trojan war, had funeral practices and early healing practices, the people homer wrote about

Homer

Greek poet from the 8th century who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey about the Bronze Age greeks, his works included medical ethics topics like death, how the dead were treated, buried, and their funeral rights, the idea of kelps, and also instances of healing and wound treatment

The Odyssey (book 11, Odysseus in the “underworld”)

ideas about death vs living, can your legacy carried on by funeral rituals be enough to compensate for the fact that you are not alive anymore, odysseus speaks with the dead at the underworld highlighting the importance of having proper burials and dying the right way to keep your legacy alive

Elpenor

from odyssey book 11 Elpenor spoke with odysseus about not being given a proper burial so he can’t peacefully be at rest, highlights the view of death as something to maintain an earthly reputation to protect their identity, chthonic immortality

Achilles

warrior from Homer’s Iliad who was glorified through this story but he still would prefer to be living and unknown rather than dead and glorified

Kleos

fame and glory after death, the things that your relatives and others do to honor your death can maintain your kleos, odyssey 11 debates whether kleos is as desirable as just being alive

Chthonic vs divine immortality

chthonic immortality (homeric view) is the idea that once you die your soul just wanders aimlessly without connecting to who you were on earth; divine immortality (pythagorean view) is that the soul has divinity, can be cleansed and purified, and can go from one body to the next until joining a divine cosmos and not actually dying, relates to the idea of death and what happens after death and depending on your viewpoint it determines whether proper burial is important or not for your legacy

Eidolon

your image (from homeric poetry) that wanders in the underworld, shows the divide between mortal humans and deathless gods and shows how a proper burial and funeral rites can help the eidolon that is your identity living on in this form

Psyche

the soul, the part of you that lives on after leaving the body that should be cared for through burial to ensure your identity lives on properly

Pythagoras/Pythagoreanism

philosopher from 6th century Ancient Greece who believe in the soul (psyche) surviving and reentering another body after death after purification and cleansing, his ideas were implemented into later Greek medical practices about balance and purification and the ideas around death not being the end all for the soul

Thanatos

death as an unavoidable end to life but it was argued exactly which parts of us live on and how death should be honored through respectful burials and funerary customs

Plato (views of death)

5th and 4th century philosopher who believed in divine immortality and the idea that the soul lives on, can be purified, and can be put in another one’s body, could have been influenced by pythagoras’ view

Aristotle (views of death)

4th century philosopher who believed in the nous (mind/reason) surviving death, didn’t believe in souls going to another body or reincarnation and so he believed that the soul and body were permanently bound and survival was done through species surviving rather than the soul

Epicurus/Epicureanism

4th century philosopher who was influenced by atomists and believed that when we die, the particles that make us up dissolve back into the infinite void (natural personal dissolution) and defined death as the complete absence of sensation and that it shouldn’t mean anything to us

The Sacred Disease (Hippocratic Writings)

argues that if disease can be cured by purification and magical treatments, then what is stopping magical treatments from causing disease and claims that it is pure deception when a healer uses magic and claims it is divine because it is just humans claiming to have deeper knowledge of the disease rather than healing it, relates to the ideas of ancient medical practices before Hippocrates that used magical healing treatments rather than hippocratic practices that went against divine intervention and magic

Machaon (Iliad, book 4)

son of asklepios who was a healer in the iliad, he is a warrior who also knew how to treat wounded people in battle which describes an instance of healing in Ancient Greek texts and how a physician at first was not just trained to do that but it was a more general knowledge soldiers had

Patroclus (Iliad, book 4)

a soldier that fought alongside achilles and also showed an instance of healing when he helped another wounded soldier which also shows how the idea of being a physician was not limited to just one job at first and medical knowledge was more widely known

Paean

the healer of the olympians (Gods) who treated Ares in the Iliad, he used herbs to help with the pain and it shows early medicinal practices where physicians used herbal treatments and materials they had on hand to treat symptoms of ailments and wounds

Apollo

the god of healing and father of asklepios, he was who a lot of the characters in these Ancient Greek stories turned to when they wanted to get rid of plague or help with healing, he was an instance of divine intervention in Ancient Greek healing

Asklepios

god of healing and son of Apollo, one of the most known healers in the Ancient Greek world who had healing sanctuaries where there was a combination of medical treatment, holistic healing and rest though incubation, and religious healing

Aeneas

character from Vergil’s Aeneid and the Iliad who was a descendant of Venus/Aphrodite and fought in the war between the trojans and the rutulians, he was injured and healed by Iapyx who had divine help from Aeneas’ mother Venus showing the blend of medical healing with divine help

Vergil’s Aeneid

an epic poem written by Vergil in 19 BC in Rome during the Augustan principate, this poem modeled Augustan values and its subject is the war between the Trojans and Rutulians where Aeneas is injured and healed by Iapyx who was quite unsuccessful and got help from Aeneas’ mother Venus

Iapyx

the healer in the Aeneid who attempted to heal Aeneas’ wounds but was unsuccessful and turned to divine intervention and Venus to heal Aeneas when his work wasn’t enough, shows the blend of medical practices and divine intervention and when medicine wasn’t enough to heal since physicians were just workers and low in social order, people turned to divine intervention

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

an epic poem written by Ovid from the 8 CE talking about the introduction of Aesculapius (Asklepios) into Rome and showing the movement of medical practices from Greece to Rome, it talks about the history of Greece and Rome up until Augustan Rome and the implementation of new medical practices in Rome that weren’t there, highlights the spread of Greek medical practices to other areas outside of Greece and the importance of Asklepios as a healer, shows instance of plague in Rome and asking the gods for help

Aesculapius (Metamorphoses, Book 15)

Roman form of the god of healing, Rome was suffering from a plague and so the Romans went to Epidaurus to speak with Aesculapius who came in the form of a snake that traveled back to Rome to end the plague, this explains the movement of medical practices into Rome and how the romans blended healing with divine intervention like the greeks just at a later time and how it was implemented into their culture

Tiber Island

the healing sanctuary in Rome in tiber river, site for temple after the snake-form Aesculapius came from epidaurus and went here to conduct healing in Rome to get rid of the plague

Sanctuary of Epidauros

the main healing sanctuary of asklepios where people would travel to for holistic healing and purification to treat them from their wounds and illnesses, different kinds of treatments were offered whether medicinal, diet, cleansing, rest, or religious and it showed how as medical practices became more advanced at that time, people would travel to these sanctuaries where physicians would provide medical care along with religious healing

Abaton, cella, incubation, votive offerings

the sleeping chamber ____ where the ritual ____ was held where the patient would sleep and have a vision/dream of their healing to be done the next day, the inner room of the temple that had a temple to asklepios, showed how in Ancient Greece at this time, gifts to the gods to ask for or thank them for healing like models of body parts that were left at temples, healing and divine intervention/religion were intertwined and one came with the other and religious treatment helped the medical treatment

Aelius Aristides

an orator who wrote The Sacred Tales describing his experienced at the healing sanctuary at Pergamum, he was known for being really sick and always having some sort of ailment so he was constantly at the sanctuary and gave a detailed account of his time there and the treatment/dreams he received and his illnesses, this was an important account of disease and its symptoms along with the ancient Greek processes of healing at these sanctuaries that gives us a good look at what exactly they did to heal and how religion was involved

Asclepieion at Pergamum

the healing sanctuary in Asia Minor that was an extension of the one in epidaurus that like that sanctuary was a place for holistic and spiritual treatment for ailments and wounds

Iliad, major characters from Book 1 (Achilles, Agamemnon, Chryses)

an epic poem written by Homer about the Trojan war that highlighted the prominent moments of the war but also the idea of death and mortality, glory (oleos), treating the dead respectfully and honorable burials, and instances of healing and divine intervention
Agamemnon: led the Greek army and did not want to give up Chryseis which caused the plague by Apollo, steals Brises from Achilles

Apollo: god who sent the plague, shows divine punishment through illness

Chryses: priest of Apollo and father of Chryseis who prays to Apollo to punish agamemnon

Chryseis: daughter of Chryses and captured by Agamemnon, her being stolen caused the plague

Briseis: Achilles’ war prize that was taken by Agamemnon

Calchas: prophet who identifies the plague from Apollo’s anger, showing causes of disease being attributed to displeasing the gods rather than having actual medical evidence to back it up before there was an understanding of what causes plagues

Athena: goddess that stops achilles from killing agamemnon

Thetis: achilles’ divine mother who asks Zeus for help in helping the trojans to show Achilles’ importance and building his legacy

Zeus: king of the gods

Greek Tragedy

Greek dramas written as entertainment that talked about various values of suffering, illness, death and more that addressed conflicts about these topics and addresses common themes like proper burial, death and glory after death, and suffering from illnesses and the divine intervention that accompanies suffering

Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus

a greek tragedy by Sophocles where Oedipus is found to be the cause of the plague by unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother that fulfilled a prophecy he didn’t know he was filling after answering the sphinx’s riddle, this story mentions themes like plague and divine punishment after being displeased by human actions, shows that the Ancient Greeks believed disease and plague was caused by angering the gods rather than a medical-backed approach

Hippocrates of Kos

from the 5th century BC, he was a well-known physician who created the Hippocratic oath that was the basis for medical ethical practices from then on and focused on diagnosing disease from natural causes instead of it being a divine punishment, held observation and diagnosis over divine diagnosis, he highly regarded respecting the patient and the doctor acting accordingly when treating patients, and he did not agree with magical treatments and religion in treatment

Protagoras

sophist, believed that man is the standard by which all other things can be judged, showed shift in explaining ailments through religion and more on observation, subjected reality differs from person to person and what’s real is what we observe and debated on what is really good for the patient or not which is something talked about in the Hippocratic oath

Pharmakos vs pharmakon

scapegoat vs remedy, the person who was expelled or abused to remove a crisis like a plague vs the drug or treatment that helped with healing, purification and cleansing vs medicinal treatment that could remedy or poison

Katharsis

societal cleansing/purification, positive impacts of disease and how it can change a society, applied to processes of greek tragedy and ridding society of something (Oedipus Tyrannus) (Aristotle) but also the purification of body like ulcers and sores in medicine, connection of body and body politic

Miasma

pollution in someone or in a community that needs to be cleansed because it is contagious, associated with disease and plague that impacts a wider population that requires katharsis to get rid of it, shows the communal side of health and treatment where the Ancient Greeks believed that plague was a result of wrongdoing by someone that spread to others and that they need to be cleansed/removed to get rid of it

Etiology, symptomatology, epidemiology

the cause or origin of the disease, the study of the disease’s signs and symptoms, and the disease patterns in a population, as Greek medicine evolved, they saw a shift in attributing the cause of a disease from divine punishment and the gods’ doing to a more natural cause but not exactly sure of what it was (Hippocrates), with a more observational way of diagnosing disease, studying the signs and symptoms was important in hippocratic medicine, also talking about the movement of disease from person to person not just being miasma polluting a community but rather contagion

Seneca the younger, Oedipus

the advisor to Nero who taught stoic philosophy and wrote their own version of Oedipus, mentioned a lot about the plague and death that came with Oedipus fulfilling gate prophecy, talks about plague being a result of miasma due to Oedipus’ bad behavior and the gods putting a plague on the community and katharsis of Oedipus would be the remedy

Humoral theory

the balance of the 4 humors of yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm in the body and an imbalance causes disease, highlights a prominent medical belief in Ancient Greece where they believed these 4 humors determined when a disease would come about and bringing these levels back to normal through lifestyle changes would return the balance and heal the person (holistic observation)

Microcosm vs macrocosm

microcosm: balance of individual human bodies

macrocosm: all of nature and the universe, balance in the universe (hot, cold, seasons) and how it relates to balancing the human form (forces also happening in body with cold and hot, moist and dry), plato/hippocratic doctors

Physis

nature, the believed cause by Hippocrates for disease being a result of natural bodily processes and that physicians had to come up with treatment to treat what they observed nature was doing with the body, movement towards figuring out what causes disease

Physiological vs ontological views of disease

disturbance in the body’s normal functioning like a humoral imbalance and that disease is a state of the body that needs to be rebalanced (Hippocratic) vs disease being its own entity that attacks the person like from a god’s punishment that is separate from the patient, the split of two views of what causes disease and how to treat it depending on earlier Greek practices or later ones

Plato (views of disease)

he believed the ideal relationship between body parts was influenced by the parts of the soul and that an imbalance in the soul causes imbalance in the body and things needed to be balanced to be healthy, holistic healing much like Hippocrates and the idea of balanced healing in the development of medicine

Aristotle (views of disease)

he believed in the humoral theory but with hot, cold, dry, and moist rather than humors, believed in the proper blending of these meaning health and improper blending and disfunctioning of the body causing disease, highlights the split in what is believed to cause disease straying farther away from believing it is a result of divine intervention

Galen (views of disease)

he was a physician who developed the humoral theory and relied on hippocratic medicine to create a system of balancing the four humors and combining it with reasoning and observation to make medicine more of a scientific practice and made strides in ethical physician practices and behaviors

Thucydides

historian from 5th century in Athens who wrote a detailed account of the plague of Athens, its symptoms, and how it spread which was an important account going further in figuring out why diseases happen, how they are contagious, and furthering the development of medical treatments against disease based on these symptoms and stopping the spread, natural over divine

Peloponnesian War

war in the 5th century BC between Athens and Sparta where at the beginning of it, a plague struck Athens and it sent the city into turmoil, Thucydides wrote an account of this war and described the plague mentioning how the physicians could not properly care for this plague that went past their abilities, funeral practices were thrown away so it talks about the idea of proper burials and respect for the dead and proper medical care

Pericles

from Thucydides, led the Athenian army in the war before the plague, he caught and died from the plague, funeral oration given by Pericles about how great Athens is before plague description (foil to plague breaking apart city), brought Athens to its peak with government, economy, and alliance

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

1st century BC follower of Epicureanism and believed things were composed of particles (atoms), believed in atarxia and that the gods did not involve themselves in human affairs, wrote on the nature of things about the Athenian plague based on Thucydides, shows an instance of the plague and the death and suffering and fear that came with illness bunt argued that we should not fear death because it is just a result of natural processes rather than punishment from the gods

Longrigg, on plague in ancient Athens

translation of Thucydides’ account of the Athenian plague and its impact on Athens’ power, also includes an account of a plague among the Carthaginians at Syracuse which was also influenced by Thucydides, writes about how physicians’ abilities are limited when it comes to widespread disease and the best thing they can do is provide the best healthcare they possibly can to the best of their ability with what they know about the disease because they don’t have divine intervention, highlights the impact of disease on society with throwing away funeral practices, social order, and morale, debunked one disease approach

The Nature of Man

part of the hippocratic corpus that talks about the balance of the four humors and that disease comes from an imbalance in these humors, physicians should try to understand and rebalance the humors to provide effective treatment, talks about the environmental and seasonal impact on health

Archagathus of Sparta

doctor from Sparta that went to Rome to practice, romans were resistant to greek medicine and he brought greek ideas into Rome that eventually caught on after Rome became more accommodating to his ideas and implemented Greek medicine into their own practices

Rome’s civil wars

a series of wars in the Roman Republic from the 1st century CE where Octavian (Augustus) became Rome’s first emperor and ended the republic, during this time the mass fighting and injuries going on led to an increased need in medical treatment solved by implementing Greek practices and death causing disorder in their society

Antonine plague

plague in Rome around 165 CE that highlight widespread illness that caused a lot of social disorder and a call for physicians to responsibly care for the sick by implementing what they got from the Greeks and the best of their medical treatment plans against a plague

Kyle Harper, on Antonine Plague

talks about the Antonine plague as something that shaped roman history by putting a lot of strain on the empire and how the romans had to respond to widespread illness from a medical and societal standpoint, highlights the balance between medical treatments to heal the people and then a grander treatment of the society to bring back order

Asclepiades of Bithynia

later doctor who came 100 years after archagathus and imported greek medical ideas into roman culture in the 1st century BC, believed in the atomist theory of the body being made of tiny particles whose movement being blocked caused disease and promoted easy holistic treatments to eliminate pain rather than creating intolerable treatments, brought up an important aspect of proper patient care when trying to ensure the patient is taken care of and treated the right way by taking into account their comfort

Scribonius Largus

1st century CE Roman physician who focused on helping the patients as best as possible rather than poisoning or killing them to morally provide healthcare the way Hippocrates promoted it and what is implemented now

Celsus

1st century CE physician who believed healing was facilitated by a friendly relationship between the physician and patient and implemented a lot of Greek medical practices into treatment through drugs, diet, and surgery to eliminate pain rather than cause more pain

Seneca the Younger, on disease and contemporary vice

believed that disease could also be caused by excess in the luxuries of life and disease being from the soul rather than natural illness in the body, treatment comes with simplicity and acting morally

Paterfamilias

male head of the household that was important in roman culture because he was in charge of the medicine in the household, being the doctor was a more familial role, roman medicine originally was not separated from the household and doctors were not as much of a thing

Roman senate (patrician class)

governing council of elite older men that influenced public policy and response to disease

Livy (what he wrote)

historian who created over 20 accounts of plague in roman history where the roman people got together under the senate’s guidance to figure out a remedy to take care of the plague divinely by appeasing the gods to get rid of the plague, shows how the romans took action through a mix of treatment for the disease itself, publicly bringing back social order, and implementing religious rituals back into treatment for disease

Prodigia

unusual events that occurred that the romans thought were signs of the gods that meant they angered them, links back to the previous ideas the greeks had about divine intervention in illness and how the romans implemented that back into their treatment systems rather than moving away from it

Contagio

contamination that the romans used to explain the passage of the disease from one person to another, early form of figuring out how a disease was spread even though they still believed it originated from the gods, they were thinking logically about how it could spread from person to person

Lectisternium

religious meal offered to the gods to appease them during plague, bringing statues of gods out and everyone would come together and feast and offer meals to the gods to cure the plague, Livy’s example of how romans responded to contagious disease

Ludi scaenici (stage plays)

new plague comes along, Livy talks about lectisternium not working, importing cultural trait of Etruscans and putting on first theater production, created roman tradition of putting on plays even though it didn’t work well for helping the plays, change in roman culture from plague remedy

Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and Its Metaphors

highlights three diseases, TB, cancer, and aids and talks about how people describe these diseases not as diseases but as metaphors to cover up the shame felt associated with these diseases, it leads to people hiding facts and feelings about the disease from the patient rather than giving all the facts straight, highlights ethical violations that come with serious illnesses like these and how we go about treatment and treating the patient morally

Priscilla Wald, Contagious

talks about epidemics that are not just medical, but change in their meaning based on fear, politics, culture, and society, highlights the idea of the outbreak narrative where the disease comes about, a carrier is identified and its spread is tracked, and then people try to contain it while stigmatizing carriers and creating groups of us vs them, talks about moral issues that come with plagues and how people being to get mistreated when disease becomes a prominent thing in society

Index Case

the first identified case of a disease outbreak where it catches the attention of medical professionals, not the first person to become infected, can cause ethical issues of who they attribute to be the index case based on scapegoating or stigmas based on who may be assumed as the first person to have the disease

Patient zero

the first infected individual of a disease, like the index case, it is the supposed first infected person which may be wrong if based on stigmas or blaming someone as a scapegoat

Carrier (healthy carrier)

someone who has the infection for the disease and can spread it to others but doesn’t show any symptoms for the disease, another way of showing how scapegoating can label people as carriers who spread the disease and get blamed for it

Outbreak narrative

the pattern of how the disease comes about, spreads, gets traced to an origin, then gets contained and treated, can show how the emergence of a new disease can cause the tracing back to an origin to be biased with scapegoating to a certain blamed group, figuring out how contagious the disease is, and stigma around treating certain groups

Hippocratic Oath

written by Hippocrates (?) anywhere from the 6th-3rd century BC that talks about the ancient greek gods related to healing and medicine, highlights the duties of the physician and teachers to properly transmit knowledge to others, gives an ethical code for how a physician should act, and also giving his own opinions on why illness happens, who is involved in disease spreading, and the impact of the oath

Prohibitions against surgery, assisted suicide, abortion

surgery was thought of as a valid practice but not as effective as other methods, euthanasia and abortion were not allowed under the oath because it is intentionally harming the patient and is unethical to purposefully kill someone or their offspring

Tradition in Medicine

the ethical foundation of medicine from the hippocratic corpus in the 5th century, disease is not just based on the balance of hot, cold, wet, and dry, medicine is something that should be practiced with care for the patient and diagnoses should come from observation, physicians should strive to act morally and practice properly based on knowledge and experience

Code of Hammurabi

Babylonian background to hippocratic oath, pre greek cultures had government surveillance over medicine while greeks didn’t, punishment for doctors to match malpractice

Teleological vs deontological approaches to ethics

the value of behaviors and methods is determined by the outcome of the action vs determining the rightness/morality of the action not by outcomes but by how it adheres to set rules, telos (end goal) and consequences vs deon (duty) and obligation, results vs rules

Etiquette vs ethics

how the doctor should properly act out of respect for the patient vs how the doctor is supposed to act based on what is right and wrong to do to the patient, professionalism and manners vs right and wrong behavior

Airs, Waters, Places

part of hippocractic corpus, ties environment to health constitution, stereotyping asian vs European cultures based on where they are compared to winds and water around them, ethnocentric slant, negative towards asian cultures, connecting microcosm of how disease comes about in one’s body based on the macrocosm of what is going on in the environment to cause disease and its spread

Iliad Book 4 (passage)

Homer, 8th Century BC, Machaon physician treats Menelaus by cleaning his arrow wound and applying healing salves, shows early Ancient Greek medical practices weren’t just limited to physicians but soldiers on the battlefield were also knowledgable in medicine, they also called on asclepius for help showing that medicine was tied with divine intervention

Iliad Book 11 (passage)

Homer, 8th century BC, Machaon the physician is wounded and removed from battle which is a heavy loss because of his knowledge of healing, the warriors like Patroclus have to step up and heal others by cleaning wounds and knowing what salves to use, shows that medical knowledge in physicians was highly sought after and basic medical knowledge was known among non-physicians as well

Aeneid 12 (passage)

Vergil, 1st century BC, Aeneas was wounded by an arrow so the physician Iapyx went to go help but was unsuccessful and healing him so he asks Venus (Aeneas’s mother) for divine intervention, shows the limitations of human physicians and how the ancient greeks blended their medical practices with religious believes and asked for the gods to step in and help

Ovid Metamorphoses 15 (passage)

Ovid, 1st century CE, a plague is in Rome so the Romans head to Epidaurus to seek help from Aesculapius who comes with the to Rome in the form of a snake to bring Greek medical practices to Rome, shows the transfer of medical practices from Greece to Rome, talks about plague and the widespread disease calling for divine intervention to help it stop, and the blending of religious beliefs and medicine

Iliad Book 1 (passage)

Homer, 8th century BC, Apollo sends a plague on the Greeks because Agamemnon won’t return Chryseis and disrespects Apollo’s priest Chryses, Calchas says the cause of the plague is Agamemnon going against Apollo so returning Chryseis would be the form of purification but Agamemnon doesn’t want to do that, this talks about the Ancient Greek belief that disease was brought upon as a punishment by the gods for doing something wrong, blending of religion and medicine and the belief of the origin of disease

Sophocles’ Oedipus (passage)

Sophocles, 5th century BC, a plague has taken over Thebes and Oedipus is trying to figure out the cause since it is linked to miasma/pollution in the community from the murder of King Laius, it is found that the cause of the plague was that Oedipus unknowingly murdered Laius and married his mother the queen Jocasta and a purification would be the way to get rid of this

Ovid Metamorphoses 7 (passage)

Ovid, 1st century CE, a plague in Aegina had devastated the people and animals there causing social disruption, lots of death, and prevents them from doing normal burial customs, they use pharmaka drugs to help heal, shows how widespread disease needs to be treated in order to promote individual healing and help with social disruption, and how medicine can heal or harm the patient depending on if it is used right

Seneca’s Oedipus (passage)

Seneca the Younger, 1st century CE, account of the plague in Thebes were Oedipus finds out he is the miasma causing this plague and that he is the reason for the suffering and death in the city, describes a lot about the suffering and death that comes with plague and the necromancy that took place to try and help with treating the plague

Thucydides Book 2 (passage)

Thucydides, 5th century BC, account of the plague of Athens included the symptoms of the disease, its progression of how it spread to Athens and from person to person, and the societal impacts it had on Athens with the breakdown of order and burial practices, also brought up concept of immunity, physicians became overwhelmed and couldn’t contain it, talks about the limited abilities of physicians, is an important account of the symptoms of this disease that can be built off of in the future and was an instance of obervational medicine practices like Hippocrates, and it also showed the societal impacts of plague such as destruction of society and getting rid of respectful funeral rites because of so many deaths

Lucretius De Rerum Natura (passage)

Lucretius, 1st Century BC, explains how disease and death occurs through natural causes based on how we were meant to live and that we should not fear death, describes the plague of Athens similar to Thucydides highlighting symptoms, suffering, contagion, and lots of deaths, similar relation to medical ethics as previous source

Hippocratic Writings The Nature of Man (passage)

Polybus, 5th Century BC, talks about the idea of the balance of the four humors blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile and how an imbalance causes disease that happens from nature throwing off one of the humors, not from divine punishment, and this should be treated by focusing on the individual patient’s needs, the season, their diet, and the illness, connects to the switch in medicinal practices from divine to natural belief in what causes disease and this idea of the 4 humors that Hippocrates also mentions in this new form of medicine

The Sacred Tales (passage)

Aelius Aristides, 2nd century CE, describes the account of his long-term illness in great detail especially about the healing he experienced at the healing sanctuary of asklepios in Pergamum, he stayed at the healing sanctuary and described the processes of incubation and treatment through dreams, which was the common way for physicians to treat patients in these ancient times attributing a lot of the care done to the gods

Hippocratic Writings Tradition in Medicine (passage)

Hippocrates?, 5th century BC, part of the hippocratic corpus talking about how physicians should be clinically trained to practice medicine as best as possible rather than just focusing on one of the four principles of hot, cold, wet, or dry, emphasizes holistic treatment that is carefully made for the patient to create a healthier whole based on observed evidence instead of divine intervention or guesses

Hippocratic Writings Airs, Waters, Places (passage)

Hippocrates?, 5th century BC, talks about the environmental influence on health and disease and that when determining what disease is present, the physician should take into account climate, seasons, weather, geography, and lifestyle since natural causes seem to cause disease, talks about how the physician should understand the patient and the environment to provide the best treatment