Medicine: Did you mean...?

A ten-year project to study and digitise some 80,000 cases recorded by two famous astrological physicians has opened a wormhole into the everyday worries and desires of people who lived 400 years ago.

The god Apollo in Greek mythology is the Olympian god of, well, quite a lot! Apollo is associated with the bow, music, divination, the sun, poetry, healing and medicine and, who would have thought, plagues. He was one of the most loved gods...

Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Kos in the 5th century BCE, and he became the most famous physician in antiquity. He established a medical school on the island, wrote many treatises on medical matters, and is, through his systematic...

Physicians in ancient Rome manufactured a wide variety of pharmaceuticals used to treat health concerns. Roman medicine was highly sophisticated, and Roman medical literature describes early antiseptics, narcotics, and anti-inflammatory medicines...

Galen (129-216 CE) was a Greek physician, author, and philosopher, working in Rome, who influenced both medical theory and practice until the middle of the 17th century CE. Owning a large, personal library, he wrote hundreds of medical treatises...

Family planning was a topic of vital importance in the ancient Mediterranean. Some of the earliest medical literature from ancient Greece and Rome deals with fertility and reproductive health. Among the numerous treatments and procedures...

The spices clove, nutmeg, and mace originated on only a handful of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago but came to have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on world trade. In antiquity, they became popular in the medicines of India and...

Medicine in ancient Egypt was understood as a combination of practical technique and magical incantation and ritual. Although physical injury was usually addressed pragmatically through bandages, splints, and salves, even the broken bones...

Simon Forman (1552-1611) was an Elizabethan physician, astrologer, magician, and alchemist who lived and worked in both London and Wiltshire, England. He was unusual in that despite receiving no formal training in medicine or astrology, and...

Oribasius (c. 320-400/403 CE) was the physician and political advisor of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363 CE). A native of Pergamon, a rich and powerful Greek city in Mysia, he studied medicine and oratory and belonged to...