HISTORY OF ANCIENT MEDICINE

The expected learning objectives, declined according to the Dublin Descriptors, are the following:

1. Knowledge and understanding (DD1)

The course aims to provide the student with knowledge and useful tools for understanding and interpreting the history of ancient medicine through the indispensable aid of multiple testimonies (literary texts, papyri, inscriptions, archaeological remains, iconographic finds) coming from area of ​​the Mediterranean and distributed over a wide time span between the Archaic age and Late Antiquity (pre-Hippocratic, Hippocratic, Hellenistic, imperial medicine). Within these chronological coordinates Western medical thought unfolds from an initial phase of a magical-superstitious nature to a terminal of a markedly scientific-philosophical type: giving ample space to the direct use of the sources achieves multiple educational objectives, as it contributes to the development of the student’s ability to know theories and models in a historical and geographical context to interpret educational and training events, to know the relationship systems between synchrony and diachrony, to grasp the space-time and cause-effect links, to establish interdisciplinary connections through the methodology of historical research, to evaluate long-lasting events and processes in the health-historical context.

2. Applying knowledge and understanding (DD2)

Through the study of the discipline applied to the different socio-economic, political and cultural contexts the student will acquire the skills to connect the theoretical and methodological contents learned with the interpretation of past, present and future events and processes, to use methodologies appropriate to the educational objectives and above all to identify in the health sector spaces and techniques of intervention by specialists both in relation to the progress of medical knowledge over the centuries, and in relation to the relationship with the patient, whose figure experienced an increased interest with the advent of Christianity, and even in relation to the protection and medical-health assistance provided to specific types of patients, such as minors, but also the elderly and the disabled.

3. Making judgements (DD3)

The acquisition of the disciplinary contents will develop in the student the awareness and maturity necessary to express, with full autonomy of judgment, points of view and opinions through the ability to re-elaborate, deepen and critically rethink the contents learned, to grasp the link between objectives and results of research, translate the analysis of learning contexts into the formulation of objectives and proposals for change and/or transformation, sift and classify increasingly complex data and above all put the main nosological, diagnostic and therapeutic theories – elaborated by ancient medical thought – in an appropriate relationship both with individual pathologies and with epidemic diseases and even with the promotion of well-being and health from early childhood to adulthood up to old age.

4. Communication (DD4)

The careful analysis of the disciplinary contents will offer the student the necessary instrumentation to correctly communicate the meaning of their ideas and actions, confront on a dialogical level with different interlocutors (specialists or not), motivate, in oral and written form, objectives, procedures and methodologies, to enhance the different points of view and above all to appropriately use the technical vocabulary of the discipline, adequately using the expressive means typical of sectoral languages.

5. Lifelong learning skills (DD5)

The course aims to provide students with the necessary tools not only to increase their knowledge in relation to the increased awareness of their training needs, but also to refine their skills in the study of increasingly complex topics and above all to broaden and perfect their ability to learn and use innovative methodologies to cope with new problems.

Frontal lessons.

Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the Syllabus.

• sources and research methods: treaties, inscriptions, medical prescriptions in the papyri, archaeological and paleopathological remains
• “Homeric”, folk and sacerdotal medicine
• scientific medicine and evolutionary stages: Hippocrates; the Hellenistic age and the medical “sects”; the Imperial period and the figure of Galen; the Late Antiquity
• health and illness, care and healing: environment and climate; pathologies and diagnosis; epidemics; hygiene and therapies (dietetic, pharmacological and surgical); tools, medicines and places of recovery
• medical specialties: obstetrics and gynecology; ophthalmology; dentistry; psychiatry
• the doctor-patient relationship: the professional ethics; legal liability and penalties; the awareness and cooperation of the patient; the triad physician-disease-patient in Christian mentality
• social and economic status of the doctor: slave, freed and free; court, municipal and military physician; the woman and the practice of medicine

I. Andorlini-A. Marcone, Medicina, medico e società nel mondo antico, Firenze Le Monnier Università 2004, pp. 1-232.

V. Boudon-Millot, Galeno di Pergamo. Un medico greco a Roma, Roma Carocci Editore 2016, pp. 9-263.

G. Arena-M. Cassia, Marcello di Side. Gli imperatori adottivi e il potere della medicina, Acireale-Roma Bonanno Editore 2016, pp. 139-170; 203-254.

G. Arena, Scribi e "cavie" umane fra i servi di Galeno: usi e abusi di un medico illustre, in C. Giuffrida-M. Cassia-G. Arena (a cura di), Roma e i 'diversi'. Confini geografici, barriere culturali, distinzioni di genere nelle fonti letterarie ed epigrafiche fra età repubblicana e Tarda Antichità, Milano Le Monnier Università 2018, pp. 156-171.