CLS 160 — Medicine in the Ancient Western World
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Patrick Hunt
Date(s): Jun 24—Jul 29
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Mondays
Class Meeting Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Tuition: $405
Refund Deadline: Jun 26
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens May 20, 8:30 am (PT)
Ancient medicine sometimes appears surprisingly similar to modern medicine. At other times, it exposes what we regard as deep superstition and ignorance. The ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, and other cultures often asked questions similar to the ones we pose about health and disease today. They also began developing surgical processes that still exist in some form, while also practicing pharmaceutical and psychiatric approaches that we can recognize in modern science. Medicine in prehistory, even before literacy, is also surprising as we see it preserved in Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old ice mummy from the Alps.
This course offers a survey of ancient Western medicine, looking at both the cultures and the pioneering individuals. We will encounter ancient doctors such as Hippocrates, Celsus, Dioscorides, and Galen, and we will examine excerpts from Babylonian tablets and the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus and explore important texts (including De Materia Medica) and medical instruments that have been preserved from Pompeii to Northern Europe. Memphis, Babylon, Alexandria, Cos, Pergamon, and Epidaurus are only a few of the places we will study where medicine had a long and successful tradition.
This course offers a survey of ancient Western medicine, looking at both the cultures and the pioneering individuals. We will encounter ancient doctors such as Hippocrates, Celsus, Dioscorides, and Galen, and we will examine excerpts from Babylonian tablets and the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus and explore important texts (including De Materia Medica) and medical instruments that have been preserved from Pompeii to Northern Europe. Memphis, Babylon, Alexandria, Cos, Pergamon, and Epidaurus are only a few of the places we will study where medicine had a long and successful tradition.