I'm a resident doc and my undergrad background was in classical studies, but I haven't really made an effort to study medical history. Where should I begin? I've read Ostler's Aequanimitas but after that, when I search for medical literature it's all contemporary drivel from Sanjay Gupta, Farmer and Gawande.
Any suggestions?
Heya doc! I've got a rather good pair of starting points for you, if you'd like to check out some of the primary sources. The best news is that your classical background should be a pretty huge help for you here! The first one is a name that you should be pretty familiar with - the works of Hippocrates are considered to be the foundation of medicine (because the Egyptians get ignored way too much), and were heavily consulted by the Romans, who were rather fond of Greek works. Hippocrates is fun, but I honestly haven't read the entire thing.
On the other hand, I HAVE read the "Roman version" of Hippocrates - his name was Celsus, and, while he was a very gifted writer, we only have one section of a massive treatise he wrote. We honestly don't know too much about him, beyond his writings, but Pliny referenced his work, and Celsus himself was familiar with Ovid's poetry - which would place his text at the early First Century CE, probably somewhere between 15-40 CE.
Anyway, enough on the background. Here's a rather solid translation. While the text itself is not considered to be "medical canon" for the era (For example, military doctors would have had a MUCH better repertoire of practical experience, while doctors in the cities would rely quite a bit on more superstitious ideas), it's a great foundation for understanding care during the Roman period - especially during the Principate. Celsus himself does seem to have had some practical experience, and spoken with those who have; a cursory reading of the text gives an impression of a man who's seen many different medical procedures firsthand. On the OTHER had, he also includes some conjecture (Remember those city docs I mentioned?), such as this little gem, which happens to be one of my favourite examples (Warning: Lengthy quote)
Whilst this kind of disease involves the region of the neck as a whole, another equally fatal and acute has its seat in the throat. We call it angina; the Greeks have names according to its species. For sometimes no redness or swelling is apparent, but the skin is dry, the breath drawn with difficulty, the limbs relaxed; this they call synanche. Sometimes the tongue and throat are red and swollen, the voice becomes indistinct, the eyes are deviated, the face is pallid, there is hiccough; that they call cynanche: the signs in common are, that the patient cannot swallow food nor drink, and his breathing is obstructed. It is a slighter case when there is merely redness and swelling, not followed by the other symptoms; this they call parasynanche.
Whichever form occurs blood must be let if strength permits; if there is no surplus strength, then move the bowels by a clyster. Cups also may be applied with benefit under the chin, also outside the throat, so as to draw out the matter which is suffocating. Next, moist foments are needed, for dry ones hinder the breath. Consequently sponges, dipped into hot oil at intervals, should be put on; that is better than hot water; but most efficacious here too is hot moistened salt. Moreover, it is useful: to make a decoction with hydromel of hyssop, catmint, thyme, wormwood, or even of bran, and dried figs, and to gargle with it; afterwards to smear the palate with ox-gall, or with the medicament made of mulberries. It is also appropriate for a cough to dust the palate with pounded pepper. If there is little effect from these remedies, the last resource is to make sufficiently deep incisions into the upper part of the neck under the lower jaw, or into the palate in front of the uvula, or into the veins under the tongue, in order that the disease may discharge through the incisions. If the patient is not benefited by all this, it must be recognized that he has been overcome by the disease.
But if these measures have relieved the disease, and the throat again admits both food and breath, a return to health is easy. And sometimes nature also assists when the disease moves from a more restricted to a more widespread seat; so when redness and swelling have arisen over the praecordia, it may be recognized that the throat is becoming free. But whatever has relieved it, the patient should begin with fluids, especially with the hydromel decoction; next soft and unacrid food should be taken until the throat has returned to its original condition. I hear it commonly said that if a man eat a nestling swallow, for a whole year he is not in danger from angina; and that when the disease attacks anyone it is also beneficial to burn a nestling which has been preserved in salt and to crumble the powdered ash into hydromel which is administered as a draught. Since this remedy has considerable popular authority, and cannot possibly be a danger, although I have not read of it in medical authorities, yet I thought that it should be inserted here in my work.
Bolded the last bit because hilarity. Spoiler alert for those who don't work in a medical field - eating swallows, charred or not, does not cure angina (which today seems to be different than the ancient definition), strep throat, or any other malady of the throat.
If you're interested in a secondary source, I'm afraid that my library is woefully inadequate with studies of Greco-Roman medicine. Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army has a few pages on it, if you'd like me to quote some of what he has for you :) Hope this helps to answer your questions, and sorry I can't get into more detail for you!
I don't do much with history of medicine but it has a very rich historical sub-genre. My wife studied quite a bit of it in graduate school, and always recommends Michael Bliss' The Discovery of Insulin to people who are wanting to wade into it without getting too academic too quickly.
Regrettably our history of medicine flair /u/michellesabrina has not posted in a few months. But she has recommended many books over time and its worth going through her posting history to find them. Here's a few:
Humoral theory was used for thousands of years, so it's hard to condense such a huge topic. If you want to understand humoral theory itself, you should turn to the works of Galen, since he wrote the most widely used texts (even if he didn't create this concept himself). His texts are what physicians at medical schools would have read in the medieval and Early Modern periods. If you want to understand how it was actually used, I would look at primary source compilations from whatever time and place you're interested in. I would start with Faith Wallis' Medieval Medicine: A Reader, because it goes through the ancient sources and moves on to the medieval period. Excellent source book and it might point you in the right direction. link
And at this post in the sub /r/historyofmedicine she provided a massive list (>30) of recommended books including this one:
Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siriasi (this is one of my all time favorites, and anything by Siriasi is great)
/r/historyofmedicine has had a few posts on recommended books, including the excellent post to which /u/idjet linked. In that post is actually one of my favorite medical history texts, Majno's The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. It's several decades old but still a great resource. Majno (a physician himself) looks are several different medical traditions (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Indian, and Chinese) and how they dealt with trauma and wound care. He has a terrific writing style and grasp of the primary texts. You might be most interested in the practical experiments he weaves into the work, like running a Kirby-Bauer test with malachite or using ants as wound closures.
For my own specific area of interest, I recommened picking up Ortiz de Montellano's Aztec Medicine and Health, and Nutrition. It's still the best overview of the subject of late Postclassic Mesoamerican health. Gates' An Aztec Herbal. a translation of a 1552 primary source, the Badianus Manuscript, is another source if you want to delve deeply into original source. It covers a wide variety of treatments for diverse ailments, but does so without much interpretation so can be intimidating if you don't know your tlacoxiloxochitl from your tlapalachiyotl. Finally, Fastlich's Tooth Mutilations and Dentistry in Pre-Columbian Mexico is another fascinating, if not exactly easily accessible text. It will certainly earn you street cred with dentists and mesoamericanists alike though.
General advice though, would be to focus on a particular time/area, or focus in on a particular field of medicine. If you have an interest in ID -- such as I do -- it becomes easier to plumb that interest for books to read or articles to look up. So your focus might turn up reading material on epidemics in early Colonial Mexico or TB in Post-Meiji Japan. If ID is something you might be interested in, but those texts seem a little obscure, I could also recommend Sherman's The Power of Plagues. It's far from a perfect text, and it certainly owes a great debt to MacNeill's People and Plagues, but it is a great introductory text to the effect of pathogens throughout human history. The book also highlights an ubiquitous problem with many histories of disease: the tendency to focus heavily on the modern era, with a great deal less attention paid to the history of diseases prior to Koch's Postulates and even less to their history outside of that recorded by Western Europeans and Americans. Still, a good starter, undergraduate level book on the subject.
I have a couple of old medical books that are around 100 years old. They are in quite less than pristine condition. If you are interested, I would be happy to give them to you. They are just collecting dust on my book shelf. I bought them on eBay around 15 years ago for like $30 each.
They do give a great perspective on how medicine was practiced back then. Some things I recall was the treatment of an asthma attack was to place a patient in a room and burn tobacco leaves. (YIKES!) To treat a child with fever required cutting off a lock of their hair, wrapping it in a leaf and then throwing it into a river or stream to carry away the fever. Also, Mercury was apparently the end all cure for just about everything. (Double YIKES!)
If you are interested, I'll take pictures of the title pages and if you are still interested, I will mail them to you. No payment needed. Pay it forward by being nice to your nurses after you graduate. :)
Edit: Practice of Medicine. John Eberle MD. 1841
System of Medicine. William Pepper. 1885