HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Migraine
9 Jun 2018
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Department
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Professor
HIST 449- Feb 27/18
Doctor-Patient Encounters
Thinking with Letts
• About the Rufus of Ephesus text
• How does she compare Rufus to Galen? To Hippocrates
• Rufus did something no one else did, he write a treatise on the systematic
questioning of patients
• She sees Galen as essentially promoting himself he is promoting his excellent
prognosis skills
• Galen is always asserting his own dominance
• She says that when Hippocrates goes in to see a patient, he has a mental
checklist and through this he will have a prognosis, he is not concerned if the
info he gets is from the patient or the patients entourage
• Letts thinks that this is deplorable
• Letts is critical about how ancient doctors except Rufus, because she is a
advocate for chronically ill patients and health care providers
• Letts was a part of policy making
• What are the strengths and limitations of this?
• She does not consider the type of writing and whether the doctor would ever
disclose personal things
• There is no work in antiquity bout how to engage with patients
• She thinks that in Galens case studies, he only sees the patient as a collection
of symptoms
• Absent from both Hippocrates and Galens is the value of probing the
patients subjective experience through any sort of unstructured discussion a
la Rufus
• She seems to be bringing a bit of baggage as a patients advocate
• She is an advocate for individuals rights
• This is not necessarily the case in antiquity, her bias doesnt necessarily
transfer to the ancients
Our questions
• Did ancient doctors converse with their patients?
• It does not appear so, they dont really care about what they say
• Did they listen to their patients subjective experience of illness?
• Were they considerate and humane?
• What about fees?
• Fees is the opportunity for the relationship to become fraught
• All doctors except for Galen get paid
• Did the Hippocratic doctor listen/talk to their patient?
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