HIST 449 Lecture 14: HIST449_Jan18
9 Jun 2018
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HIST 449- Jan 16/18
Hippocratic Thoughts on Disease
Constitution= the weather of a place
Part 1: Nature of Man and envisioning the inside of the body. What is
allopathy?
Allopathy/Nature of Man
• Hippocrates invents the word epidemic
• Epidemic means a disease that everyone is getting
• Explanation for epidemics- some diseases are made by regimen, all men can
diseased by the same air, epidemics are not caused by regimen
• Allopathy works when the epidemic is cured with an opposite treatment
• Unhealthy exhalation in the air causes epidemics (gas)
• Solution to this- breathe more lightly or move away from the city
• No fear of contagion
• Hippocratic model is weak on contagion- contagion sounds like magic to him
• Tries very hard to secularize diseases and distance them from magic
• Malaria means bad air- ideas carry on
• Low lying, swampy air is bad – must be what causes malaria
• Malaria was a chronic problem in the ancient world
• Swamps attract mosquitoes
• Also, the air smells really bad in Rome
Attempts at visualizing the body
• The blood vessels, case of aging athlete, bladder stone explained
• Most fevers come from bile
• Creates whole vascular systems without a heart
• Ideas of bloodletting, imagining a plethora of liquid somewhere in the body
• Emerging evacuations of humours
• Children produce bladder stones because they are warm
• Bile is hot and dry, so the more bile, the shorter the period is between fever
peaks
• The ancient way to sort out fevers is to monitor peaks
• Melancholy- is caused by black bile. Why are geniuses always so
melancholy?
Aging Athlete
• Sediment in urine and dysentery
• Body has become slack with age – this is Hippocrates explanation for why he
is experiencing health problems
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