Talk:Ancient Greek medicine

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nhess8.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge
Don't merge At this point I would prefer not to merge, unless every treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus is going to receive a multiparagraph summary in this article. Ancient Medicine describes one Greek author's fantasy of what s/he thinks the history of medicine is like. Maestlin 03:24, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, I agree. But I leave open in the future for a possible merge once both articles are in better shape. I leave a See also section linking it with Ancient Medicine. --Francisco Valverde 14:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)yes if you really think so then

parsimony and the export of some text
I found the account of Aristotles' biology to have lapsed into digression; consequently I shortened it. I found some of the content to be missing from the general article on Aristotle and hope to fit it in there with as little damage as possible

If anything, I did not shorten and focus enough and I think someone else should look at further pruning and focusing. Clown in black and yellow 05:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Good Source
There is an excellent account of the intellectual history of western medicine, from ancient Greece up to the end of the 19th century, in the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [www.1911encyclopedia.org]. It is much longer than is customary for a Wikipedia article, but it makes the five main schools of ancient medical thought all the more understandable for that. In contrast, the Catholic encyclopedia (also available online) has a clearer "point of view," which sometimes boils down to "Arabs bad - dogmatics/scholastics good."

These accounts must both be a century or so old, so it may not be appropriate to transfer their contents here wholesale: anyway most people who can access Wikipedia could look at them directly. NRPanikker (talk) 14:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Male and Female doctors in Ancient Greek
There are good primary sources listed here (as obtained from epigraphic records as well as ancient sourced records) of the role of women and women doctors in particular for child-bearing. Here's the link: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/viewfile/52571/41177

Anyboyd bold and brave to make a section of the role of women doctors in Ancient Greek societies? 124.180.192.113 (talk) 23:59, 9 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link. I don't quite know what would be "bold and brave" about writing this up, but the discussion would need to be guided by reliable modern secondary sources.  I'll dig around a bit. davidiad.: 02:51, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

reference 3 (father of modern medicine) is not working, it seems to be a dead end. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.241.43.50 (talk) 16:08, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Dioscorides

 * I think that adding some more information on Dioscorides would be beneficial to this article. Unfortunately I do not know of any good places to get information on him but I know he was a huge figure to medicine all the way through the middle ages. I just feel like it would be a good addition to the overall article to have some more history on him. I think it is a great informative article overall though! Bakeore (talk) 22:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Minor edits
A lot of great information, and I love the fact that you have pictures as well. I only have some minor edits that I think might add to the quality of your already great work.

Early on, Ancient Greeks believed that illnesses were “divine punishments” and that healing was a “gift from the Gods.” the "g" in "gods" should not be capitalized. In your second paragraph at the beginning of your article, I feel like you could take " Humorism refers to blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm" out completely, as paragraph  3 seems  to treat  better discuss the concept of humorism.

Diet was thought to be an issue as well and might be affected by a lack of access to adequate nourishment. You could rephrase this to "poor diet was thought to be an issue as well." and you could also rephrase "availability of clean drinking water" to "lack of clean water". I think it sounds better this way. ( all of this edits are from paragraph two).

Finally, I noticed that some concepts  that were discussed in each paragraph did not really  tie together, for instance the part of paragraph three were u talked about Hippocrates, (Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine", established a medical school at Kos and is the most important figure in ancient Greek medicine. [3] Hippocrates and his students documented numerous illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus, and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still in use today. The contributions to ancient Greek medicine of Hippocrates, Socrates and others had a lasting influence on Islamic medicine and Medieval European medicine until many of their findings eventually became obsolete in the 14th century.) may actually fit better into the paragraph beneath it.Mbar3466 (talk) 01:20, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

history of science edits
I really enjoyed this article. I just have some minor adjustments for certain sections.

The introduction: There is a lot of information in this section. I would trim some of the beef in this section and add more to the other sections. It was very overwhelming when first opening the article up.

Hippocrates and Hippocratic Medicine: There is very accurate sources here. Very well written section. I also like the pictures in this section. Be careful with commas in this section. Some of the sentences were choppy. Other then that I have no major suggestions for this section.

Asclepieia: I like this article. Maybe explain the Rod of Asclepius and the Modern Depiction of Caduceus some. It would really tie well with the article.

The only other suggestions I would make is the article is very long with loads of information. Maybe at the start of the article create a timeline of the physicians and their works of medicine. Also, at the end of the article you can put in your sections of "external links" and "further reading" more information. This would clean up the bulk of the article so you are not explaining every little thing on the page. Citations were spot on. Grammar for the most part was very legible.

Recap: Clean up the article format and cut down on the beefy sections. This would really help the page stand out.

Zach - I really enjoyed your page. I learned a tremendous amount. Please just take my suggestions with a grain of salt. This article is very good, and it reflects it in its work. Also, The Wikipedia Gods have seemed to leave the page alone, so that is a major plus in knowing your article is very well done. Good Job! Mavorik1 (talk) 21:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

There are a lot of things to write about on this subject so I applaud you for finding all of this information. I am sure it will help a plethora of people that are looking for this type of information. One improvement that I could make is making the introduction shorter. If you look at other wikipedia articles the introduction is not too long and provides sort of a summary. There is no need to delete all that is written but I would organize it better, maybe adding a section or two. This way it will be easier to follow. I really enjoyed the section on Asclepieia. Of course be sure to double check for spelling errors and sentence fragments. But overall great job! (Chriscorbaz (talk) 06:59, 19 November 2013 (UTC))

Zach, the information you have added is quite astounding! It's pretty awesome. The only thing I would change would be the Galen section. There is a lot of information on it but, it's not headed properly. I would just add a few headers to that section to make reading easier and a bit more guided.Spaghettiman19 (talk) 23:18, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Student Editing
Hello, I am a student at Colgate university an am going to be editing this page as part of a class project. I plan to leave the information already present alone and to add in new sections about pre-hippocratic medicine, as I feel that this page would benefit from a section on this. It will include what was known about disease, surgery, and anatomy, as well as other areas and will be based mostly on what historians have discerned from the medical aspects of Homer's epics. Thanks! Nhess8 (talk) 17:08, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Dubious
"The earliest known Greek medical school opened in Cnidus in 700 BC." The article Knidos, 2nd paragraph, last sentence states "During the hellenistic age, Knidos boasted a medical school; however, the theory that this school already existed at the beginning of the classical age is an unwarranted extrapolation." To support your claim, you need to provide a source that can argue against Knidos#History's source.

73.219.226.54 (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

This claim, and the one following are also both made at History of medicine, 3rd paragraph. Once this issue is resolved, changes should be made on that page, as well.

73.219.226.54 (talk) 20:29, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Pre-Hippocratic medicine
The opening paragraph gives the impression that there are no known Greek sources prior to Hippocrates. What about Alcmaeon of Croton? Apparently there is little known of him, but I think that you should at least mention him. There is a mention in the parent article at History of medicine, 3rd paragraph, and here in the paragraph immediately before this one. The discussion on these pages should be moving from overview to more specific, not the other way around.

73.219.226.54 (talk) 20:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Medicine in The Iliad
In the section Ancient Greek medicine, there are a number of references or allusions to quotes in The Iliad. There is an online version of this story at. (Thanks to for finding it!)  If you can provide more precise quotes and references, we can link to them directly. Thanks!

73.219.226.54 (talk) 21:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Section Historical legacy
The section Ancient Greek medicine is outside the scope of this article. This content should be integrated into Medicine in the medieval Islamic world or Medieval medicine of Western Europe. This section tries to "tie-in" the influence of this period on the latter periods. While that a useful thing to do, this is not the place for it. The article History of medicine is the one that links one period to another. This article should be a more detailed discussion of the ancient Greek period, just as the other sub-articles discuss their own time/place periods.

73.219.226.54 (talk) 00:22, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is Greek medicine not declared as pseudo science?
every ancient medical practice like indian ayurveda, chinese medicine is declared pseudo science but not greek ones, why is that? Rameezraja001 (talk) 05:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Because there are no contemporary practitioners who try to present it as bona fide science. Note, though, the navbox "Fringe medicine and medical conspiracy theories," which includes Ancient Greek medicine alongside Ayurveda. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  03:54, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If anybody comes along proposing that they can use the Ancient Greek system of humours as a modern medicinal system I will personally start shouting about at WP:FRINGE/N - you have my word on that. Simonm223 (talk) 19:06, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
 * No i think not labeling ancient greek medicine as pseudo science is eurocentric and i know a very good reason for it, and yes the ancient greek medicine is still practiced as ;;yunnani medicine all over middle east even by some hakeems'' in south asia, regards Rameezraja001 (talk) 04:22, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Provide reliable sources that this is happening, that it's being treated as a science by practitioners and that it's in fact the same thing as ancient greek medicine. If you do that, I'll support inclusion of the content. Simonm223 (talk) 12:25, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Greek Medicine is alive today as Unani or Yunani Medicine, also Tib or Tibb (Arabic for medicine). It is principally practiced in India and Pakistan, and 4 1/2 year courses for the degree of Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery (or variations on that theme) are available there and in South Africa. What is taught in the 21st century is not the same as used to be 2000 years ago: but balancing the four humours is still at the heart of it. As Greek medicine was taken forward by Arabs and Persians, students for a B.U.M.S. do not need Greek or Latin: instead they study Urdu and Arabic. Wikipedia has little to say about this, but there is plenty on the internet. NRPanikker (talk) 15:39, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It is also taught in Sri Lanka, at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine of the University of Colombo. NRPanikker (talk) 15:53, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Wikipedia article on Iranian traditional medicine gives a more detailed account of diagnosis based on ancient Greek ideas than that on Unani medicine does. NRPanikker (talk) 15:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

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