This volume provides a new approach to Galen's theory of respiration and to his physiological thinking. The method involves reconstructing Galen's theoretical and experimental research in the structure and context of his reasoning.
The book deals with the problem of muscular respiratory movement, the structure and function of organs such as the heart, lungs and pulmonary vessels, and the purpose of breathing. Other topics include bodily respiration (diapnoe), the explanation of asphyxia, miasmas and other pathological processes. The book ends with a study of breathing and vocal exercises...

This collection of essays focuses on the ways in which Greek and Latin authors viewed and wrote about the history of medicine in the ancient world. Special attention is given to medical doxography, i.e. the description of the characteristic doctrines of the great medical authorities of the past.
The volume examines the various attitudes to the history of medicine adopted by a wide range of ancient writers (e.g. Aristotle, Galen, Celsus, Herophilus, Soranus, Oribasius, Caelius Aurelianus). It discusses the historical sense of ancient medicine, the variety of versions of the medical past...

"Diet for an Emperor" presents the first translation into English of Books 1 and 4 of the "Medical Compilations" of Oribasius, together with a commentary assessing the medical theories behind this invaluable source of information on food and diet in the Roman Empire.

This volume is an edition of the Commentary by Stephanus of Athens, the seventh-century physician and philosopher, on book One of Galen's Therapeutics to Glaucon. It comprises introduction, Greek text with critical apparatus and index of sources, English translation, notes, bibliography, and index. As one of the few medical texts to date from this period, and one of the most detailed and complete, the commentary sheds important light on the nature and extent of medical education in the West, on the eve of the Arab conquest.

This volume provides new information on a brilliant but not well known period of the history of surgery. It uses as its point of departure a remarkable but insufficiently known documentation: Greek literary papyri (from I B.C. to A.D. VII), which often are unique witnesses to lost medical works, bearing testimony to original theories, practices and vocabulary.
The first part of the book provides an introduction to ancient surgery, to Greco-Roman Egypt and to the Greek medical papyri. The second part presents the critical edition with French translation and commentaries of seven surgical...

The Fragments of the Methodists is a new attempt to give a first corpus of its kind. Manuela Tecusan has collected, edited, and translated all the surviving testimonials concerning one of the most influential 'schools' or doctrines of medicine in late antiquity: Methodism. This volume contains the fragments accompanied by a textual apparatus and facing English translation. The introduction provides a guide to the collection. The second volume presents a commentary to all fragments and two glossaries of medical and pharmacological terms. Apart from its intrinsic novelty, this material...

This book is a study of the ways in which Galen sought to establish the brain as the regent part (hegemonikon) of the body, utilising a rigorous anatomical epistemology and an often sophisticated (but perforce limited) set of physiological arguments Part One surveys the medical and philosophical past in which the study of the brain occured, and looks at the materials and methods which Galen employs to legitimate his hegemonic argumentation. Part Two examines Galen's anatomical understanding of the brain, especially the ventricles. Part Three offers a critical evaluation of Galen's physiolgy...

For the first time, medical systems of the Ancient Near East and the Greek and Roman world are studied side by side and compared. Early medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, the Minoan and Mycenean world; later medicine in Hippocrates, Galen, Aelius Aristides, Vindicianus, the Talmud. The focus is the degree of "rationality" or "irrationality" in the various ways of medical thought and treatment. Fifteen specialists contributed thoughtful and well-documented chapters on important issues.

This collection of papers studies the Hippocratic writings in their relationship to the intellectual, social, cultural and literary context in which they were written. 'Context' includes not only the Greek world, but also the medical thought and practice of other civilisations in the Mediterranean, such as Babylonian and Egyptian medicine. A further point of interest are the relations between the Hippocratic writings and 'non-Hippocratic' medical authors of the fifth and fourth century BCE, such as Diocles of Carystus, Praxagoras of Cos, as well as Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus. The...

This is a book about doctors in Roman Egypt, about who they were, their daily activities both professional and lay, their standing and that of their profession within the society and the law.