THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN MEDICINE
Emeritus Professor Sebastian van As, Department of Paediatric Surgery, University of Cape Town
Wednesday 21–Friday 23 January 11.15 am COURSE FEES R345; Staff and students R173
The Ancient Egyptian civilisation spanned three millennia and represents the cradle of Western medicine. This course will highlight some of the basic Ancient Egyptian concepts regarding health, as well as various aspects of ancient medical care, including medical and surgical therapies. The Greek period started with Asclepius, son of Apollo and the early God of Medicine, after whom the first hospitals, the Asclepieia, were named. Pythagoras, a mathematician, started the scientific tradition in medicine. Hippocrates, the Prince of All Doctors, left approximately seventy medical text books. Much of Roman medicine was focused on the army. Claudius Galen (130–200 CE) was in charge of gladiators and can be described as the first trauma surgeon. He called the gladiator wounds the ‘windows to the body’ and founded the humeral theory. Much of the Greco-Roman medical tradition was incorporated in the very sophisticated Arabic medicine, also influenced by Indian and Chinese medicine. Arabic medicine was the base for Medieval medicine, gradually metamorphosing into our modern Western medicine.
Lecture titles
- Pre-history and Egyptian medicine
- Greco-Roman medicine
- Arabic and Medieval medicine
Recommended reading
Lyons, AS and Petrucelli, R. 1997. Medicine: An Illustrated History. New York: Abrams Books. Parker, S. 2016. Medicine: The Definitive Illustrated History. London: Penguin Random House.
Porter, R. 2001. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine. University College London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
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