Download or read book Society Medicine and Religion in the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides written by Ido Israelowich and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales offer a unique opportunity to examine how an educated man of the Second Century CE came to terms with illness. The experiences portrayed in the Tales disclose an understanding of illness in both religious and medical terms. Aristides was a devout worshipper of Asclepius while at the same time being a patient of some of the most distinguished physicians of his day. This monograph offers a textual analysis of the Sacred Tales in the context of the so-called Second Sophistic; medicine and the medical use of dream interpretation; and religion, with particular emphasis on the cult of Asclepius and the visual means used to convey religious content.

Download or read book Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire written by Ido Israelowich and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of both patients and healers in the High Roman Empire. Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire offers a fascinating holistic look at the practice of ancient Roman medicine. Ido Irsaelowich presents three richly detailed case studies—one focusing on the home and reproduction; another on the army; the last on medical tourism—from the point of view of those on both sides of the patient-healer divide. He explains in depth how people in the classical world became aware of their ailments, what they believed caused particular illnesses, and why they turned to certain healers—root cutters, gymnastic trainers, dream interpreters, pharmacologists, and priests—or sought medical care in specific places such as temples, bath houses, and city centers. The book brings to life the complex behavior and social status of all the actors involved in the medical marketplace. It also sheds new light on classical theories about sickness, the measures Romans undertook to tackle disease and improve public health, and personal expectations for and evaluations of various treatments. Ultimately, Israelowich concludes that this clamoring multitude of coexisting forms of health care actually shared a common language. Drawing on a diverse range of sources—including patient testimonies; the writings of physicians, historians, and poets; and official publications of the Roman state—Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire is a groundbreaking history of the culture of classical medicine.

Download or read book Homo Patiens Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World written by Georgia Petridou and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World is a collection of studies about the patients of the Graeco-Roman world, their role in the ancient medical encounters and their relationship to the health providers and medical practitioners of their time.

Download or read book Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While most people today take hygiene and medicine for granted, they both have had their own history. We can gain deep insights into the pre-modern world by studying its health-care system, its approaches to medicine, and concept of hygiene. Already the early Middle Ages witnessed great interest in bathing (hot and cold), swimming, and good personal hygiene. Medical activities grew over time, but even early medieval monks were already great experts in treating the sick. The contributions examine literary, medical, historical texts and images and probe the information we can glean from them. The interdisciplinary approach of this volume makes it possible to view this large field in a complex and diversified manner, taking into account both early medieval and early modern treatises on medicine, water, bathing, and health. Such a cultural-historical perspective creates a most valuable bridge connecting literary and scientific documents under the umbrella of the history of mentality and history of everyday life. The volume does not aim at idealizing the past, but it definitely intends to deconstruct modern myths about the 'dirty' and 'unhealthy' Middle Ages and early modern age.

Download or read book Illness Pain and Health Care in Early Christianity written by Helen Rhee and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-22 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did pain and illness mean to early Christians? And how did their approaches to health care compare to those of the ancient Greco-Roman world? In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines how early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care and how their perspective was influenced both by Judeo-Christian tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout her analysis, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in constructive dialogue with early Christian literature to elucidate early Christians’ understanding, appropriation, and reformulation of Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through the sixth centuries CE. Utilizing the contemporary field of medical anthropology, Rhee engages illness, pain, and health care as sociocultural matters. Through this and other methodologies, she explores the theological meanings attributed to illness and pain; the religious status of those suffering from these and other afflictions; and the methods, systems, and rituals that Christian individuals, churches, and monasteries devised to care for those who suffered. Rhee’s findings ultimately provide an illuminating glimpse into how Christians began forming a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world.

Download or read book Studies in the Historical Jesus written by Justin J. Meggitt and published by Mutual Academic. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies in the Historical Jesus: Anarchy, Miracles, and Madness is a selection of key essays on the historical figure of Jesus published over the last fifteen years by Justin J. Meggitt. Each addresses a central question in the study of Jesus and his context, from the role of myth in the creation of traditions about him and the historicity of his miracles, to the problem of his politics and the reasons for his execution. The collection brings fresh perspectives and new data to bear on enduring debates, and demonstrates the value of "history from below" in making sense of the historical Jesus and the world that made him.

Download or read book Truly Beyond Wonders written by Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated study of healing pilgrimage in the Roman empire during the second century AD. The focus is upon one particular pilgrim, the famous orator Aelius Aristides, whose Sacred Tales is examined in the context of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon, where the author spent two years in search of healing.

Download or read book Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World written by George Kazantzidis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

Download or read book Divination and Revelation in Later Antiquity written by Elsa Giovanna Simonetti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period from the Late Roman Republic to the end of antiquity was marked by a wide interest in divination, and more broadly by an intense belief in the possibility of establishing close and personal connections with the gods. Divinatory practices underwent profound changes, accompanied by new trends in religious belief and philosophical reflection. Different religious, ethnic and cultural groups resorted to prophecy to define their respective identities and traditions, to articulate their peaceful or polemical interactions, and more broadly to construct their own worldview, the effects of which are still visible today. This wide-ranging volume creates a holistic picture of divination in antiquity, with perspectives from scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds. They argue that a greater focus on transcendent knowledge of the divine and cosmos influenced theories of divination among pagans, Jews, and Christians during the later part of the period.

Download or read book Beyond Priesthood written by Richard L. Gordon and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen a surge of scholarly interest in these religious professionals and a good number of high quality publications. Our volume, however, with its unique intercultural character and its explicit focus on appropriation and contestation of religious expertise in the Imperial Era is substantially different. Unlike the rather narrow focus of earlier studies of civic priests, the papers presented here examine a wider range of religious professionals, their dynamic interaction with established religious authorities and institutions, and their contributions to religious innovation in the ancient Mediterranean world, from the late Hellenistic period through to Late Antiquity, from the City of Rome to mainland Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, from Greek civic practice to ancient Judaism. A further advantage of our volume is the wide range of media of transmission taken into account. Our contributors look at both old and new materials, which derive not only from literary sources but also from papyri, inscriptions, and material culture. Above all, this volume assesses critically convenient terminological usage and offers a unique insight into a rich gamut of ancient Mediterranean religious specialists.

Download or read book Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire written by Claire Bubb and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when we juxtapose medicine and law in the ancient Roman world? This innovative collection of scholarly research shows how both fields were shaped by the particular needs and desires of their practitioners and users. It approaches the study of these fields through three avenues. First, it argues that the literatures produced by elite practitioners, like Galen or Ulpian, were not merely utilitarian, but were pieces of aesthetically inflected literature and thus carried all of the disparate baggage linked to any form of literature in the Roman context. Second, it suggests that while one element of that literary luggage was the socio-political competition that these texts facilitated, high stakes agonism also uniquely marked the quotidian practice of both medicine and law, resulting in both fields coming to function as forms of popular public entertainment. Finally, it shows how the effects of rhetoric and the deeply rhetorical education of the elite made themselves constantly apparent in both the literature on and the practice of medicine and law. Through case studies in both fields and on each of these topics, together with contextualizing essays, Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire suggests that the blanket results of all this were profound. The introduction to the volume argues that medicine was not contrived merely to ensure healing of the infirm by doctors, and law did not single-mindedly aim to regulate society in a consistent, orderly, and binding fashion. Instead, both fields, in the full range of their manifestations, were nested in a complex matrix of social, political, and intellectual crosscurrents, all of which served to shape the very substances of these fields themselves. This poses forward-looking questions: What things might ancient Roman medicine and law have been meant or geared to accomplish in their world? And how might the very substance of Roman medicine and law have been crafted with an eye to fulfilling those peculiarly ancient needs and desires? This book suggests that both fields, in their ancient manifestations, differed fundamentally from their modern counterparts, and must be approached with this fact firmly in mind.

Download or read book Paul and Asklepios written by Christopher D. Stanley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What role did offers of physical healing (or the hope of receiving it) play in the missionary program of the apostle Paul? What did he do to treat the many illnesses and injuries that he endured while pursuing his mission? What did he advise his followers to do regarding their health problems? Such questions have been broadly neglected in studies of Paul and his churches, but Christopher D. Stanley shows how vital they truly become once we recognize how thoroughly “pagan” religion was implicated in all aspects of Greco-Roman health care. What did Paul approve, and what did he reject? Given Paul's silence on these subjects, Stanley relies on a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach to develop informed judgments about what Paul might have thought, said, and done with regard to his own and his followers' health care. He begins by exploring the nature and extent of sickness in the Roman world and the four overlapping health care systems that were available to Paul and his followers: home remedies, “magical” treatments, religious healing, and medical care. He then examines how Judeans and Christians in the centuries before and after Paul viewed and engaged with these systems. Finally, he speculates on what kinds of treatments Paul might have approved or rejected and whether he might have used promises of healing to attract people to his movement. The result is a thorough and nuanced analysis of a vital dimension of Greco-Roman social life and Paul's place within it.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World written by Paul Keyser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The second section covers the early Greek era, up through Plato and the mid-fourth century bce. The third section covers the long Hellenistic era, from Aristotle through the end of the Roman Republic, acknowledging that the political shift does not mark a sharp intellectual break. The fourth section covers the Roman era from the late Republic through the transition to Late Antiquity. The final section covers the era of Late Antiquity, including the early Byzantine centuries. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy. The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World guides the reader to further exploration of the concepts and models of the ancient sciences, how they evolved and changed over time, and how they relate to one another and to their antecedents. There are a total of four dozen or so topical essays in the five sections, each of which takes as its focus the primary texts, explaining what is now known as well as indicating what future generations of scholars may come to know. Contributors suggest the ranges of scholarly disagreements and have been free to advocate their own positions. Readers are led into further literature (both primary and secondary) through the comprehensive and extensive bibliographies provided with each chapter.

Download or read book Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought written by Chiara Thumiger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an archaic, unfamiliar and Greek-sounding disease described by the Hippocratics, 'phrenitis', to meningitis, stress syndrome and delirium: this book takes the reader on a journey through key phases of Western ideas about human physiology and mental health and reflects on loss and survival in the history of disease.

Download or read book The Undying written by Anne Boyer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." —Sally Rooney, author of Normal People "Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." —Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations

Download or read book Peter s Halakhic Nightmare written by John R.L. Moxon and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Luke intend Peter's visionary command to eat 'unclean animals' in Acts 10 to suggest the dissolution of the Jewish Law? Whilst scholars have argued over sources, inconsistent redaction and later reception, many have failed to notice here the novel use of a type of transgression anxiety dream. John Moxon shows how by the incorporation of such naturalistic motifs, Luke takes "revelation" in a new and decidedly psychological direction, probably imitating similar developments in Graeco-Roman biography. If the vision reveals an illegitimate transfer of disgust within an exaggerated halakha of separation, then its target is prejudice and inconsistency, not the Jew-Gentile divide as such, as underlined by the ironic contrast with the pious Cornelius. In this reading, Luke's non-supercessionism is maintained, whilst showing him acutely aware of the kinds of nightmare holding many back from the nascent Gentile mission.

Download or read book Ancient Divination and Experience written by Lindsay Gayle Driediger-Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This volume sets out to re-examine what ancient people - primarily those in ancient Greek and Roman communities, but also Mesopotamian and Chinese cultures - thought they were doing through divination, and what this can tell us about the religions and cultures in which divination was practised. The chapters, authored by a range of established experts and upcoming early-career scholars, engage with four shared questions: What kinds of gods do ancient forms of divination presuppose? What beliefs, anxieties, and hopes did divination seek to address? What were the limits of human 'control' of divination? What kinds of human-divine relationships did divination create/sustain? The volume as a whole seeks to move beyond functionalist approaches to divination in order to identify and elucidate previously understudied aspects of ancient divinatory experience and practice. Special attention is paid to the experiences of non-elites, the perception of divine presence, the ways in which divinatory techniques could surprise their users by yielding unexpected or unwanted results, the difficulties of interpretation with which divinatory experts were thought to contend, and the possibility that divination could not just ease, but also exacerbate, anxiety in practitioners and consultants.