ABSTRACT

How healthy were people in ancient Greece and Rome, and how did they think about maintaining and restoring their health?

For students of classics, history or the history of medicine, answers to these and many previously untouched questions are dealt with by renowned ancient historians, classical scholars and archaeologists.

Using a multidisciplined approach, the contributors assess the issues surrounding health in the Greco-Roman world from prehistory to Christian late antiquity.

Sources range from palaeodemography to patristic and from archaeology to architecture and using these, this book considers what health meant, how it was thought to be achieved, and addresses how the ancient world can be perceived as an ideal in subsequent periods of history.

chapter |11 pages

INTRODUCTION

What is health?

chapter 3|24 pages

HEALTH IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN TIMES

The case studies of Paphos, Cyprus and Corinth, Greece

chapter 5|23 pages

HOLDING ON TO HEALTH?

Bone surgery and instrumentation in the Roman Empire

chapter 6|16 pages

‘WITHOUT YOU NO ONE IS HAPPY’

The cult of health in ancient Greece

chapter 9|18 pages

DRAMA AND HEALING

Ancient and modern

chapter 10|12 pages

‘CURING’ DISABILITY

chapter 12|11 pages

BUILDINGS FOR HEALTH

Then and now

chapter 13|14 pages

THE HEALTH OF THE SPIRITUAL ATHLETE