In the Western tradition medicine has been – and remains – one of the most complex of sciences: no other science combines a core of technical (scientific) knowledge and doctrines with public commercial practice, a constant struggle against (or negotiation with) ‘alternative’, opposing, or parallel doctrines and practices, and – just to really complicate matters – the constant presence of government (and/or religious) authority and legal meddling or influences. If you think about it, physicists don’t often get taken to court for their physics, after all. Mathematicians don’t have to talk to the public (and just as well) and certainly don’t need a “bedside manner”. Medicine today is a practical art and an applied science, and so it has been for the last two and a half thousand years. The relationship between these aspects – scientific theory, the market place, and legitimisation and regulation – makes the history of medicine as a science and as a social practice indissoluble, and makes its history one of the most complex and dramatic parts of the history of science.
The theme of these lectures will be to examine the changing pressures that explain the nature of ancient medicine, how practitioners in each generation have legitimised their practices, and to understand how very unlike modern medicine it was, for all that it was clearly and genuinely medicine. The comparison with the modern is just misleading.
The very notions of illness or disease, cure, or wellness, are a changing combination of social factors and theoretical notions, just as are doctor–patient relations (and what each expects of the other). The ideas of what a doctor was supposed to ‘do’ with sickness have changed over the millennia: some past practices seem very far from what we would today expect of a doctor, and some treatments seem very far from what we would expect a doctor to do today to ‘cure’ our ailments. The lecturer gets squeamish, however, so the gorier bits of the history will not get detailed discussion. Sadly, there will be no class demonstrations of ancient medicine, such as surgery without anaesthetic or antiseptics.
After a look at some very early medical practices, we shall look at the ‘birth’ of what has been called scientific medicine in ancient Greece, and how these ideas developed alongside ‘non-rational’ traditions … and how those non-rational traditions, along with political and theological pressures shaped ‘rational’ medicine. We will see how the professional practice of doctors and caring institutions changed in response to the changing world of Roman society and the intervention of Christian ideas.
The course is not a technical history of medicine, and no technical background will be presumed. The lecturer lectures, and does not use PowerPoint. A good sense of humour is essential, however.
What our students say
"Piers Bursill-Hall is a terrific instructor. He opened our eyes to the classical world in his own unique way, and brought the ancients to life with down-to-earth stories, humour, and solid scholarship."
