Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography.

Thesis (MA (Ancient Studies)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the concept of the sanus homo as presented by Celsus in the de Medicina. The first (introductory) chapter outlines the importance of Celsus’ de Medicina in the study of Roman medicine. The de Medicina is one of five treatises on various subjects written by Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the 1st century AD. When scientific Greek and Latin texts were recovered during the Renaissance the text of the de Medicina was one of the first medical texts to be put into print. Medical practitioners, ancient, medieval and modern, have been universal in their opinion that Celsus’ descriptions are correct, precise and complete, and of practical use. Furthermore a brief outline of the composition of this important work is also given in this chapter. The preface (Prooemium) of the de Medicina forms a unique component of the work and gives the reader insight into the thoughts and personality of its author. The rest of the de Medicina - eight books, which Celsus introduces by systematically setting out the contents of each particular book - is divided into three parts: health preservation, diseases and healing. Each part, in turn, is introduced by a schematic outline for that part ...

Thesis (M.Arch.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Rufus of Ephesus's 'Quaestiones Medicinales' is an under-studied work by one of the most respected doctors of Greco-Roman antiquity. This thesis presents a new translation - the first in English of the complete work - and a reassessment of the treatise. I propose that, far from being a simple handbook teaching doctors how to take a patient history, as has hitherto been assumed, QM is an ardent plea for doctors to recognise the limits of their own knowledge and the indispensability of questioning the patient. I argue that QM articulates the idea that the aim of medicine cannot be achieved through medical knowledge alone, and that, in constructing the patient as an essential partner in diagnosis and decisions about treatment, Rufus implies a sharing of authority between doctor and patient that is noticeably different from the emphasis that other authors, particularly the determinedly hierarchical Galen, place on securing patients' obedience, a subject on which Rufus is noticeably silent. I argue that Rufus is unusual in the clarity and candour with which he perceives and acknowledges the limits of medical knowledge, in his conceptualisation of questioning as a discursive rather than a formulaic activity, in his explicit insistence that it must be addressed directly to the patient, in his psychological concept of habits, and in his recommendation of questioning as a strategy for resolving the tension between universal theory and individual experience. I look at modern cross-cultural research into the factors that drive patient compliance, and note that chief among them is patients feeling they are partners in the treatment process. This raises the question whether and to what extent the features that drive compliance are diachronically as well as cross-culturally consistent, and whether Rufus's shared authority model is more likely to have produced successful treatment outcomes than the autocratic paradigm promoted by Galen, and subsequently absorbed into Western medical tradition, that seems to have met with so much resistance.

by Cynthia Yvonne Kent-Toussaint / Typescript / M.A. Florida State University 2001 / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-172)

This dissertation is a study of the differing explanatory criteria used for the assessment of epistemic medical claims, particularly anatomical claims, in the work of Galen of Pergamum (129-c. 216 CE). It focuses on Galen's use of anatomy and anatomical exegesis to position himself in relation to the various medical sects or haireseis active in the Late Roman Empire. Consequent on the emergence of invasive anatomical investigations in the early Hellenistic period (3rd cent. BCE), the explanatory and therapeutic value of anatomical information came to be a defining characteristic of competing medical sects. The Empiricists, who, we are told, were reacting to what they believed was the theoretical promiscuity of other medical thinkers, took their name from their reliance on experience rather than theory, the latter a methodological commitment they attributed to other medical thinkers whom they grouped under the broad category of Dogmatists. This sensitivity to theoretical claims is apparent from the fact that the Empiricists eschewed anatomical dissections, on the grounds that they required analogical moves from structures in corpses to structures in living creatures. If Galen is to be taken at his word, by the second century CE, sectarian disputes between the medical sects had risen to a fever pitch. Galen, who was at pains to make a place for his own medical beliefs in this debate, stresses the need for explanatory theoretical accounts of the body and things relevant to its biological function but also insists that these theoretical accounts be based in empirical observations. One of the arguments he must overcome is the problem of anatomical analogy, raised by the Empiricists. Galen not only engages with this issue from an abstract point of view but, this dissertation argues, he engages with it through the narrative structure of his anatomical accounts throughout his work and especially in his procedural anatomical handbook, De Anatomicis Administrationibus. Historically, this treatise has either been ignored by scholars or studied as a technical treatise that lacks in artifice. This dissertation questions this approach and considers the argumentative role of Galen's anatomical exegesis in the debate over the explanatory value of anatomy in Greco-Roman medicine. It takes as one of its main focuses, Galen's accounts of elephantine anatomy. It argues that these accounts are governed by different norms of assertion, which do not place the same premium on accurate reporting of anatomical detail, from the surrounding anatomical narrative in De Anatomicis Administrationibus. To that end, it shows the need for a more nuanced reading of fachprosa, such as Galen's anatomical work, than these texts have historically received. / text

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished