Tag Archives: Antiquity

Emperor Claudius and his physician, Xenophon of Kos

October 17, 2022

Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States   Cover of Claudius the God by Robert Graves Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Drusus Nero Germanicus, Emperor of Rome from 41 to 54 CE, though known to historians, became a household name in 1970 with the advent of the popular television series I, Claudius. But he had already gained […]

Love as illness: Symptomatology

February 23, 2022

Frank Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, United States   Figure 1. Sappho as imagined by Raphael in the fresco known as Parnassus in the Raphael rooms in the Palace of the Vatican (c. 1509–1511). She appears in a corner of the fresco, holding a scroll with her name. Via Wikimedia. Is love a disease? I mean erotic, […]

Tutankhamun’s androgynous appearance

September 30, 2021

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 […]

Carl Gustav Jung

May 6, 2021

Anne Jacobson Oak Park, Illinois, United States   Carl Jung. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Creative Commons. In the autumn of 1913, Carl Gustav Jung was traveling alone by train through the rust and amber forest of the Swiss countryside. The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist had been lately troubled by strange dreams and a rising sense of tension, […]

Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso

January 29, 2021

Nicolás Roberto Robles   Badajoz, Spain   Figure 1. Imaginary portrait. Sancho I El Craso. José María Rodríguez de Losada. between circa 1892 and circa 1894. Public domain. Via Wikimedia. “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients […]

The influence of the text De Arte Gymnastica on the resurgence of medical gymnastics in Renaissance Italy: Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606)

December 15, 2020

Philippe Campillo Daniel Caballero Lille, France   Figure 1. Hieronymous Mercurialis (1530–1606). Line engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1528-1598. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) The physicians of ancient Greece were aware that muscular exercise was a source of health and strength, as well as achieving corporal beauty through a balanced relationship between different parts of […]

In the heart of Damascus

February 13, 2020

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

February 11, 2020

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 […]

Medicine in the afterlife – The Egyptian Book of the Dead

April 16, 2019

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 […]

Byzantine physicians

January 16, 2019

Greek physicians dominated medicine for almost two thousand years, beginning with the school of Hippocrates, of Herophilus and Erasistratus in Alexandria, and continuing after the Roman conquest. Celsus and Galen were in Rome; Dioscorides was in the Roman army during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Aretaeus of Cappadocia practiced sometime during the second century. […]