Book review: Greco-Roman Medicine and What it Can Teach Us Today
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover: Greco-Roman medicine and what it can teach us today. The Republic of Rome was founded in the sixth century BC. In the third century BC, the western Roman Empire began to spread outside the borders of Italy. Roman rule came to Britain in AD 43 with the […]
Tutankhamun’s androgynous appearance
Glenn Braunstein Los Angeles, California, United States Gilded wood statues of Tutankhamun found in his tomb. The left figure shows him wearing the “white crown” as ruler of Upper Egypt (southern Nile Valley) while that on the right with the flattened “red crown” represents him as the king of Lower Egypt (Delta area).1 Photo […]
From Baghdad to Chicago by Asad A. Bakir
The title of Dr. Bakir’s erudite and engaging book brings to mind another book with a similar title. It is From Bagdad to Stambul (1892), one of the series of adventures that places its heroes in the city where Dr. Bakir was born almost exactly half a century later. The author of these stories was […]
In the heart of Damascus
Kera Panni Seaside, California, United States Propaganda in support of President Bashar al-Assad between the Citadel of Damascus and the entrance to the suq, (May 2007). Personal archives, photo taken by author Even as a child in the American suburbs, I knew my blood flowed from Syria. Relatives said my Jiddoo’s parents were farmers […]
America’s Arab refugees: vulnerability and health on the margins
Richard Zhang New Haven, Connecticut, United States Image used with permission of Marcia C. Inhorn. Arab refugees, like others throughout history, have grappled with issues of somatic and mental health, cultural belonging, and fertility. Timely and eye-opening, Marcia Inhorn’s America’s Arab Refugees is the first anthropological book to focus on the aforementioned refugees and […]
Moses Maimonides—physician and philosopher
Photo by David Baron. CC BY-SA 2.0 The great Hebrew scholar and physician Moses Maimonides was born in Cordoba, Spain, ca.1135. Pupil of the famous Ibn Rushd (Averroes), he became like his teacher a polymath, writing about ethics, metaphysics, religious law, and even astronomy. Much of his medical knowledge was acquired in Fez, Morocco, where […]
Where philosophy and medicine overlap
Mariami Shanshashvili Tbilisi, Georgia Achilles bandaging Patroclus’s wounded arm. Ink drawing after an Attic cup by the potter Sosias, c.500 B.C. Achilles bandaging Patroclus’s wounded arm. Ink drawing after an Attic cup by the potter Sosias, c. 500 B.C. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY In Plato’s Charmides there is a remark by Socrates that is neither […]
Medicine in the afterlife – The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Maureen Hirthler Bradenton, Florida, United States “And therefore shall I neither be borne away, nor carried by force to the East to take part in the festivals of the fiends; nor shall there be given unto me cruel gashes with knives, nor shall I be shut in on every side, nor gored by the […]
Lessons learned from the Greeks: The physician-patient relationship in Hippocratic Gynecology
Jenna Nickas New Brunswick, NJ, USA Sanctuary of Asclepius, Epidaurus, Greece. June 8, 2013 (photo taken by Jenna, on her 21st birthday) The medical treatment of women in Classical Greece was a topic not overlooked by the Hippocratic tradition. Much of the Corpus addresses the health of women, especially Epidemics and Diseases of Women. […]
Medicine in Greek mythology
JMS Pearce Hull, England, UK Fig. 1 Caduceus and Asclepian single serpent Some of the earliest ideas about health and disease lie in Greek mythology. The Greeks of prehistory told, retold, and often remoulded their tales of immortal gods and goddesses that were imaginative, symbolic creations. Stories of the gods probably started with Minoan and […]