Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Aretaeus

  • Aretaeus of Cappadocia, second only to Hippocrates

    Aretaeus was born in Cappadocia during the Roman hegemony over Greek Asia Minor. Few details are known about his life, but it is believed he studied in Alexandria and practiced medicine in Rome around the second century AD. After his death he was forgotten until rediscovered during the Renaissance, when a Latin translation of his…

  • Celiac disease, Areteus, and Samuel Gee

    Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which eating gluten proteins damages the villi of the small intestine causing food malabsorbion. It was described around the first part of the second century A.D. by Aretaeus of Cappadocia as a state in which the food is not broken down in the stomach but passes on undigested and…

  • Leprosy: A nearly forgotten malady

    JMS Pearce Hull Royal Infirmary   Fig 1. Patient at St. Jørgen’s Hospital Leprosy was the first proven instance of a bacterium causing a human disease. Along with plague, poliomyelitis, and smallpox, leprosy has beleaguered mankind for millennia, causing devastating and often fatal infections that were historically impossible to cure or prevent. The nervous system,…