Doctors and Health Care Practitioners in Ancient Greece | Early European History And Religion

Home | Category: Education, Health and Transportation

HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONERS IN ANTIQUITY

Physician treating a patient (Attic red-figure aryballos, 480–470 BC)

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Drug sellers, root cutters, midwives, gymnastic trainers, and surgeons all offered medical treatment and advice. In the absence of formal qualifications, any individual could offer medical services, and literary evidence for early medical practice shows doctors working hard to distinguish their own ideas and treatments from those of their competitors. The roots of Greek medicine were many and included ideas assimilated from Egypt and the Near East, particularly Babylonia.” [Source: Colette Hemingway, Independent Scholar,Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004, metmuseum.org \^/]

“Medical practitioners frequently traveled from town to town, but there is little evidence to suggest that they were hired to provide free care for the general population. In Rome, for instance, where traditional Italian medicine competed with foreign imports, many doctors were Greek. Anyone could practice medicine, although most were free citizens. Medical training in ancient Greece and Rome might take the form of an apprenticeship to another doctor, attendance at medical lectures, or even at public anatomical demonstrations. \^/

“Two of the most famous healing sanctuaries sacred to the god were at Epidauros and on the island of Kos. The success of the cult of Asklepios in antiquity was due to his accessibility—although the son of Apollo, he was still human enough to attempt to cancel death. Those who sought a cure in the temples erected to him were subjected to ritual purifications, fasts, prayers, and sacrifices. A central feature of the cult and the process of healing was known as incubation, during which the god appeared to the afflicted one in a dream and prescribed a treatment. \^/

Mention must also be made of quackery and sympathetic cures. The belief in the latter was very general in antiquity, and was shared even by unprejudiced men of considerable education. This was effected by amulets, supposed to ward off or heal diseases, and also by magic words which we should now describe as conjuring; laying on of hands, symbolical washing, etc. The sellers of drugs were specially occupied with quackery; besides rouge, paint, and other means of promoting beauty, they also sold medicines and offered their wares in mountebank fashion. Very often, when sick people had failed to obtain alleviation or cure from a regular physician, they gave him up and resorted to quackery instead. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

Physicians in Homer’s Time

Achilles bandaging the arm of his friend Patroclus

Homer, the author The Iliad and the Odyssey, is thought to have lived around 700 B.C. The Iliad and the Odyssey are said to have taken place around 1200 B.C. Homeric-era doctors were chiefly concerned with healing the wounds inflicted in war, still they possessed some surgical skill in cutting arrows out of wounds, putting on bandages, etc., and were also acquainted with the healing qualities of certain herbs, which they used not only for external treatment of injuries, but also apparently for internal use, in reducing fever, etc. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

Knowledge of this kind always appears very early, even among nations of slight civilisation, and is handed down from generation to generation. But the healing art was not confined to heroes or demigods, such as Aesculapius and Podalirius, who were afterwards regarded as ancestors of the physicians’ profession, and who traced their origin and their knowledge alike to the gods. There were also, even at that time, professional physicians, and certainly it cannot have been left to chance to determine that some persons possessing surgical and medical knowledge should be with every army.

It is no longer possible to trace in detail the development of the medical profession after the times of Homer. In the historical period we find the healing art developed in two special directions; first, as practised by an actual medical profession; secondly, as a kind of religious mystery in the hands of priests; besides these, quackery was known in antiquity, as in all times.

Asklepiadae — Professional Physicians in Ancient Greece

The professional physicians, who, even in later times, regarded their art as divine, and handed down by their ancestor Aesculapius (on which account they also called themselves Asklepiadae), were probably a development from the priestly physicians. It is very likely that in the first centuries after Homer, the practice of the medical art was still directly connected with the worship of Aesculapius, and that the separation which we find in the historic period, where some remained as medical assistants to the priests in the sanctuaries, and others practised independently on their own account, only gradually made way. It cannot be a mere chance that the places where the most celebrated medical schools of antiquity existed, Cos and Cnidus, were also regarded as the chief seats of the worship of Aesculapius. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

The professional physicians, who practised their art independently, and were not connected with the sanctuaries, naturally received a fee, and though this brought them into somewhat bad repute, with which every art that conduced to making money was regarded, yet their occupation stood in much higher general estimation than any of the trades, and it was a serious reproach if they, as sometimes happened, insisted on receiving their payment beforehand, and in case of inability to pay, refused to give any treatment at all.

20120222-health Roman_catheters.jpg
Roman catheters
Their knowledge was not acquired at colleges or hospitals, like that of our modern physicians, but, as a rule, they became assistants or apprentices to old experienced physicians, whom they accompanied on their visits, and by whom they were instructed in diagnosis and therapeutics, as well as in the preparation of medicines. There were sellers of drugs, who kept the most important remedies, but there were no apothecaries in our modern sense, and physicians always prepared their own medicines. There does not appear to have been any examination necessary in early times before practising the medical profession, or any direct control or supervision of the doctors, but in later times physicians seem to have held together in a sort of guild, and, perhaps, even solemnly dismissed their apprentices at the end of their period of instruction before their assembled colleagues. This is suggested by the oath of Hippocrates, which has been preserved to us, in which the young disciple of Aesculapius promises to keep only the welfare of his patient before him, to keep silence, to give no one poison, even at his own request, etc. Probably this oath was only used in the school of Hippocrates and his followers.

Types of Doctors in Ancient Greece

Among the professional physicians there was a further distinction between those who practised privately and those who had official positions. The former either gave their advice at home or else visited their patients. Slight invalids, who were able to go out, generally visited the physician in his consulting hours, and there they received not only advice but sometimes also direct treatment, since other apartments for bathing, operating, etc., were connected with the consulting room, and the physician also prepared and dispensed his medicines here. Even those who were very ill, as, for instance, the wounded Lamachus in the “Acharnians” of Aristophanes, were carried straight to the doctor when the case was pressing. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

The position of the public physicians, who were chosen and paid by a community, and therefore bound to receive no fees for their treatment, was a different one, though it is not clear whether they treated all the citizens or only the poor ones. These public physicians sometimes received very high salaries. Thus the physician Democedes, as public doctor at Aegina, received a salary of one talent (about £326); thereupon he was summoned to Athens with a salary of a hundred minae (£393), and in the following year the tyrant Polycrates, of Samos, invited him, probably to fill the post of public physician, not as his own private doctor, and gave him a salary of two talents (probably Attic talents, therefore £471). On the other hand we sometimes hear of rich physicians treating the poor free of charge.

Specialists do not seem to have been common in ancient Greece, the same doctors treated external and internal complaints, and also men and women. It seems, however, from the oath of Hippocrates that there were specialists who undertook the operation of cutting for stone. Oculists were unknown till a later period, when the medical practice generally developed in various ways, and in particular the influence of exercises, and the dietetics connected therewith had a very important influence on medical methods.

These physicians, although they at times made use of strange or “sympathetic” means of treatment, yet in general aimed at scientific methods, building on the knowledge handed down to them by their predecessors, and enriching it by their own experience and studies.

Of course a very celebrated physician could not himself treat all his patients, and he therefore employed assistants in his consulting room, who also accompanied him when he paid visits abroad, in order to profit by the master’s experience at the sick bed; and it may not have been very pleasant for the patients when the doctor thus arrived in company of a not inconsiderable troop of students. It was still more unpleasant, however, if want of means compelled them to resort to inferior assistants, who sometimes were even slaves.

Slave Doctors in Ancient Greece

These slave doctors were not only summoned to the slave population, but they also treated free people, chiefly those who were too poor to pay a high fee. Of these it was said that they differed from the better physicians, who were careful and who studied and watched their patients, in paying very hasty visits, scarcely taking time to inquire after the nature of the illness, and hurrying on after giving any directions that might occur to them. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

Sometimes a citizen had one of his slaves taught the healing art by some physician, supposing he showed any ability for this profession, and by this means he had someone in the house who, in case of need, could supply help at once. The position of the Greek slaves, especially in Attica, was a comparatively free one, and therefore we must not be surprised that they were willing to entrust the welfare of their body to a slave, seeing that they even left much of the moral training of their children to him.

Complaints were often made, too, about free physicians, not on account of their hastiness and carelessness, but rather because of their boastful and haughty bearing; thus, for instance, Menecrates, a physician of Syracuse, was accused of always dressing in the most elaborate fashion, and wishing to be called Zeus. Others were rude or inconsiderate to their patients, like that doctor who answered a patient, when he expressed fear of death, with the words of Homer: “Patroclus, too, is dead, and he was a better man than thou.” Others gave annoyance by carelessness in their dress and noisy manner, loud talk, etc. Hippocrates insisted that a physician should aim at a certain amount of elegance in dress and care in regard to his person, though he adds characteristically that any doctor is at liberty to do otherwise supposing his patients prefer it.

Healing Priests of the Aesculapian Sanctuaries

Many ancient Greeks sought treatment from priests of the Aesculapian sanctuaries resorted, seem to have occupied a very doubtful position between empirical therapeutics and superstitious hocus-pocus. It had been a custom from ancient times for the priests of Aesculapius to practise the healing art. Their knowledge was supposed to be in part very ancient, handed down by the god himself, and in part divine revelation, which was continually renewed. Some of the sanctuaries of Aesculapius were renowned and visited beyond all others on account of their wonderful and successful cures, in particular Cos, Cnidus, Tricca, but especially Epidaurus, and afterwards also Pergamum.[Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

To these sanctuaries the invalids who sought healing went as pilgrims, just as people still go in Catholic countries to wonder-working shrines, and as in these we see countless memorials of successful cures, pictures and descriptions of diseases, wax or silver imitations of the part or limb that was healed, etc., so in ancient times thank-offerings were made to Aesculapius, sometimes in the shape of coin, sometimes also imitations of hands, legs, eyes, ears, and breasts, etc., in marble, silver, or gold, or else in simple wax or clay, together with the name of the person who found healing there.

Some also dedicated tablets, on which was inscribed a detailed account of their illness and cure, and the priests set up large tablets in the domain of the temple, on which all manner of wonderful cures were described. The geographer Strabo tells us of such inscriptions, describing diseases, in the sanctuaries of Epidaurus, Cos, and Tricca. Pausanias saw in the temple domain at Epidaurus six large tablets of this kind. Very considerable fragments of two of these were found a few years ago, which give us a very interesting insight into the proceedings at the Aesculapian sanctuaries.

Dream Oracles at the Aesculapian Sanctuaries

The healing at Aesculapius sanctuaries was effected by what was called “incubation”; the patient had to lie down at night in the sanctuary and sleep; in a dream the god appeared to him, and either suggested to him the remedy which would cure him, or else undertook, on the spot, to heal the sleeper, so that the patient, when he awoke, found himself restored to health, and went joyfully away! Aristophanes, in his “Plutus,” drastically depicts one of these cures in the temple. The blind god of riches comes to the temple of Aesculapius to seek for healing; after taking a bath in the sea, he is conducted to the sanctuary; he offers a sacrifice and then lies down to sleep, together with other patients, and one of the temple servants warns them to keep unbroken silence.

The servant who accompanies Plutus, and who relates the proceedings, seems to be a somewhat free-thinking rogue. He cannot sleep, and as he observes that after the invalids have gone to sleep, the priests take away and pocket the offerings laid upon the altars, he also takes the opportunity to filch a pot of porridge from an old woman near him. After a time the god himself appears, accompanied by two goddesses of healing. He goes round, examines the individual patients, and, at last, comes also to Plutus; he feels his head, dries his eyelids with a linen cloth, and one of the goddesses puts a purple veil over his face. Suddenly two great snakes come from the interior of the temple, creep under the veil, and lick the eyelids of Plutus, who thus recovers the power of sight. Here the cure takes place during sleep, as also in the stories which are related on the inscriptions of Epidaurus, mentioned above.

The cures which took place later on in the sanctuaries of Aesculapius by means of incubation, or temple sleep, which were customary even in the Roman period, were of a different nature. The invalids were not actually cured during their sleep, but they received in a dream an indication from the god of the manner in which they could be freed from their sufferings, directions sometimes in reference to dietetic measures, such as baths, fasting, etc., and sometimes to medicines. In these cases, too, we must suppose that the invalid fell into a state of half-sleep, during which a priest in the form of the god appeared, and gave the directions in question, for which a quantity of medical knowledge, gradually acquired by experience, stood the priests in good stead. Sometimes healing thermae, or springs, which were found near some of the sanctuaries, did good service, especially if the invalids remained there for some time. The Greek sanctuaries of Aesculapius were almost always situated on high ground, where the air was healthy and pure. There must always have been houses for the reception of sick people, especially those who came from a great distance. Thus the sanctuary of Aesculapius at Epidaurus was about four miles from the town, but, to prevent any pollution of the holy place, no children must be born there and no one must die there, and on this account pregnant women and dying people were mercilessly sent away. Of course the priests did not give their aid for nothing, but were repaid in money or offerings to the shrine, and we find many allusions to these offerings; indeed, the sanctuary at Epidaurus could vie in wealth with that at Delphi.

It was not only in the temples of Aesculapius that dream oracles existed. Many other gods or heroes took similar care for suffering humanity, just as at the present day the shrines which possess miraculous pictures of Madonnas or relics vie with one another. Thus sick people were received in the temple of Hades, situated between Tralles and Nysa, in Lydia, but here it was the priests and not the patients to whom the method of cure was revealed in sleep, and this was also the case in the temple of Amphiaraus at Oropus, on the borders of Attica and Boeotia.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024