Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine

Elliott, James, Sir, 1880-1959Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
228K words
Chapters
23

Tags

English Originals Medicine Traditional MedicineMedical HistoryAncient MedicineScience EnlightenmentAcademic StudyPopular ExplanationAncient GreeceRoman Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine by Sir James ElliottAuthor: Elliott, James, Sir, 1880-1959,Language: English, Class: R: Medicine, Release Date: May 5, 2007

Editor's review

Sir James Elliott's Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine is an introductory history of ancient Western medicine written for general readers. The word "outlines" in the title signals its approach: a concise narrative tracing the development of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome, from early medical ideas to the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions and on to medical practice and public health in the Roman period. The author had a medical background, and his account balances medical content with historical context, clearly organized and restrained in length. As a public-domain ebook from Project Gutenberg, it serves well as supplementary reading for courses in medical history, classical civilization, or the history of science, and for anyone curious about where Western medicine came from. The original is in English and dense with terminology; reading with notes or reference works is recommended.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read in chapter order to first establish the chronological thread from Greece to Rome.
  2. When encountering key figures such as Hippocrates and Galen, look up background material to deepen understanding.
  3. After reading, organize a table matching figures to schools in your own words to consolidate what you have learned.
  4. Read alongside general histories of medicine to fill in details the outlines leave undeveloped.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23

FAQ

Is this book suitable for medical students? It works well as supplementary reading for courses in medical humanities or medical history. It provides an overall outline of ancient medicine, but it is brief and does not go deeply into specific theories or clinical details; medical students should treat it as an introductory framework and then read monographs for further depth.
Does the book cover traditional Chinese medicine or other medical systems? Judging from the title and classification, the book focuses on the Greco-Roman medical tradition and does not cover traditional Chinese medicine or other non-Western systems. For cross-civilizational comparison, other works would need to be read alongside it.
How difficult is the English, and is a foundation in medical vocabulary required? It is academic outline-style English with regular sentence structure but many medical terms and classical names. General English reading ability is enough to make progress; a dictionary helps with proper nouns, and no prior medical vocabulary is necessary.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Elliott, James, Sir, 1880-1959 Author · New Zealander · 1880–1959

Sir James Elliott (1880–1959) was a New Zealand physician who worked for many years as a medical editor and writer on the history of medicine. Public information about his life is limited; what can be confirmed is chiefly his role as a medical editor and historian of medicine, and his representative work, Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine. The book surveys the development of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome in a concise, outline form, covering major physicians, medical ideas, and the evolution of diagnosis and treatment. It shows his concern with organizing historical material into clear, readable summaries, in a style that is orderly and economical—suitable for readers who want a quick overview of classical medicine. The work also offers English-language readers an accessible introduction to the history of medicine, reflecting his tendency as a medical editor to combine scholarly substance with readability.