Medical Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean

In 1998, rescue excavations began at the ancient Graeco-Roman spa town of Allianoi, located approximately 20 kilometers northeast of Pergamon in western Turkey. The site was slated for submersion upon the completion of the Yortlanı Dam, which became operational in 2010; it is now underneath a water reservoir and inaccessible. The excavations of Allianoi, which commenced in 1998, were able to reveal only a portion of the town before they were halted in 2006.

Although not an expert himself, Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. 45-120 AD) shows a more than average interest in the field of ancient medicine (e.g., Boulogne 1996; Vamvouri Ruffy 2012). Several of his friends and acquaintances were doctors by profession – Cleomenes, Crato, Glaucus (cf. Gal., Comp.Med.Loc. 4 (xii, 743 K.)), Moschion, Nicias, Onesicrates, Trypho, to name just a few –, and in some of his dialogues, medical experts are staged as interlocutors in the debate.

This paper examines the introductions to the pharmaceutical texts of three authors to see how they approach botanikē technē within the medical community in the ancient world: Galen’s De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis ac Facultatibus, Scribonius Largus’ Compositiones Medicamentorum, and Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica. I will argue that each one attempted to define and subsume different kinds of botanical knowledge into the wider context of medical practice in order to contribute to his own epistemic authority as an elite iatros.

This paper explores the medical community of Hellenistic Kos and the interplay between doctors, patients, and religious healing practices in the Koan Asklepieion. Here I argue that via a unique epigraphic practice at Kos, we can see how itinerant physicians worked through and on behalf of the religious sanctuary, benefitting not only themselves but also Kos and the priests of Asklepios.

In her 2003 book Contagious, Priscilla Wald shows how plague narratives create, sustain, and reify imagined communities. Borrowing from Wald, this paper examines the plagues within the Epistulae Hippocratis as they illustrate how iatrike might be perceived as a discursive field used to fix the boundaries of a cultural community in the ancient world.