Abstract
In order to fully penetrate the values and conduct of the ancient Greek physician, it is necessary to examine first certain fundamental elements of his historical setting. Thus I have selected three areas of initial inquiry which hold the key to comprehending the cultural framework within which the ancient physician practiced his craft. These three areas are best introduced in the form of three questions. First, who was the Greek physician? Second, what were some of the leading theories of health and disease that guided his care of patients? And third, what were the dominant attitudes and theories of his culture regarding death and the afterworld?
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Notes
Edelstein, Ludwig: 1967, ‘The Distinctive Hellenism of Greek Medicine’, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein, ed. by Lilian C. Temkin and Owsei Temkin, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 376. See Homer Odyssey XVII. 383–85.
Iliad, XI. 514. Lattimore, Richard (trans.): 1961, The Iliad of Homer, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 248.
Aristotle Politics III. 6. 1282a. Rackham, H. (trans.): 1969, Loeb Classical Library, London, p. 227.
Plato Laws IV. 720. Taylor, A. E. (trans.): 1966 The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. by Huntington Cairns and Edith Hamilton, Random House, New York, pp. 1310–11.
Temkin, Owsei: 1963, ‘Greek Medicine as Science and Craft’, Isis 33, p. 214.
Amundsen, Darrel W.: 1978, ‘History of Medical Ethics: Ancient Greece and Rome’, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, ed. by Warren T. Reich, 4 vols., The Free Press, New York, III, p. 933. Hereafter I shall abbreviate references to the Encyclopedia of Bioethics as EB.
Herodotus The Persian Wars II. 84. Rawlinson, George (trans.): 1942, The Greek Historians. The Complete and Unabridged Works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Arrian, 2 vols., Random House, New York, II, p. 123.
Saunders, J. B.: 1963, The Transitions from Ancient Egyptian to Greek Medicine, University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas, pp. 15–33.
Aristotle Politics III. 1286a 12, ff. Jowett, Benjamin (trans.): 1941, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. by Richard McKeon, Random House, New York, p. 1198.
Jaeger, Werner: 1957, ‘Aristotle’s Use of Medicine as a Model in his Ethics’, Journal of the History of Science 77, 54-61, especially 55-57. Cf. Gracia, Diego: 1978, ‘The Structure of Medical Knowledge in Aristotle’s Philosophy’, Sudhoffs Archiv 62, No. 1, 17.
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© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Carrick, P. (1995). The Status of the Physician. In: Medical Ethics in Antiquity. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5235-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5235-5_1
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