In this book, William Harris explores the question, who did the ancient Greeks and Romans turn to when facing the uncertainties of ill health? Harris answers this question by investigating the variety of individuals (including the god Asclepius, root-cutters, and drug sellers) who participated in the encounters of healing in the ancient world and the medical knowledge that laypeople had to heal themselves. By analyzing literary and archaeological evidence, Harris aims to reconstruct the experience of ill health in the ancient world and to consider “the full range of human behaviour in the face of ill health” (Preface, vii). The study of the thought processes and emotions of the ancient Greeks and Romans towards ill health (which motivated them to turn towards a particular healing measure/practitioner) through the available evidence is an integral aspect of this book. Two major arguments which Harris presents in the book include the concept that widespread skepticism about doctors may have made room for different ways of dealing with illness (87) and that social status (along with autonomy), gender and personal preference must be considered when investigating who ancient individuals turned to when they fell ill. Although these arguments are only explicitly mentioned in Chapters 2 and 3, they are the basis for points brought up in other chapters.
The book comprises 15 chapters, which address the topics of pathologies and aggravating factors producing ill health in the ancient world, doctors and their limitations, vernacular health care, pain and analgesics, contagion in ancient thinking about disease, disgusting medications, physicians refusing treatment, abortion, seers and healthcare, healthcare and gods and heroes, the rise and fall of the cult of Asclepius, doctors and religion, amulets, mental disorders and ancient hospitals. This is a diverse set of subjects. Harris deploys a wide range of evidence and engages with a rich array of modern scholarship in the process. He analyses the usual learned medical writings, such as the works of the Hippocratic Corpus and Galen, alongside texts that are less strictly medical (from the plays of Aristophanes to the Philogelos) in search of a fuller picture of medicine in the ancient world from the perspective of laypeople, although these sources are still elite men. He draws on epigraphical and papyrological sources as well as other forms of material culture depending upon the subject of the chapter.
Harris is not the first to write a comprehensive survey of or a general introduction to ancient medicine. Perhaps his main interlocutor is Vivian Nutton and the multiple editions of his Ancient Medicine.[1] To an extent, Harris disagrees with Nutton’s conception of the “medical marketplace” as a key characteristic of the ancient world and its relation with healing, as he notes that “the disadvantage of the marketplace model is that it may suggest that the sick/consumers had a fairly free choice about what kind of care to seek” and “Nutton’s exposition centres on doctors, and he sees the different schools of physicians (Pneumatists, Dogmatists, and so on) as the market competitors par excellence” (156). His’ book shares some similarities with all of these previous studies, but in other respects provides a novel approach in terms of its scope and focus. While a number of these volumes have discussed the role and authority of women (and particularly midwives) in ancient medicine, few have debated the involvement of other shadowy figures like seers in healthcare or have brought social status, gender and personal preference into a discussion about who people might turn to when facing ill health. In addition, Harris’ focus on uncovering the thought processes and emotions of ancient people is distinctive, though not entirely unprecedented.
The audience for this book may be undergraduate students who are looking for a broad overview of aspects of ancient medicine in the Greco-Roman world, as the book covers numerous topics (everything from mortalities in the ancient world to ancient hospitals). The scope of this enterprise, centred on showing how ancient individuals turned to other practitioners besides doctors for help, will aid the undergraduate in understanding that there were a variety of practitioners in the ancient world besides simply the doctors. This focus also provides an interesting base for scholars of ancient medicine to develop further research questions, just as it offers ways into the subject of ancient healthcare from diverse perspectives.
This book is well-written, clear, and well organized. Some of the chapters can be read as stand-alone discussions, as they have introductions and conclusions independent of the book’s preface and conclusion. Harris addresses some interesting questions which persist in the study of Greco-Roman medicine, including the place of doctors within healing cults, ancient beliefs about the aetiologies of disease, and whether anything like a modern hospital existed in the Greco-Roman world. However, some arguments put forth by the author are questionable. In the attempt to understand the thought processes and emotions underlying why an ancient person might turn to individuals other than doctors, the author occasionally views the ancient world through a modern lens. For example, in Chapter 2 Harris focuses extensively on the efficacy of ancient therapeutics from a modern “scientific” perspective, stating that Hippocratic therapeutics were defenseless against diseases like pneumonia, as one instance, and that other prescriptions would have been fatal. He concedes a little to discussions which stress the importance of a wider understanding of efficacy, one that extends beyond biochemistry, admitting that “medical efficacy is itself a complex concept” (67), but that needs to be recognised more fully.[2] Harris also extensively discusses the efficacy of ancient analgesics in Chapter 4. While he briefly returns to the topic of who in the ancient world was likely to suffer more pain (previously discussed in Chapter 1), this chapter focuses on pharmaceutical solutions to pain, psychological resistance to pain, and social attitudes towards it. Harris suggests that “it can be hypothesized that our capacity for resistance has declined as the expectation of pharmacological relief has steadily increased” (195) but later contradicts himself by noting that individuals who are members of “out-groups” have been thought to suffer less pain historically (197). Furthermore, Harris could have extended the book’s focus to include the experiences of individuals with disabilities in the ancient Greco-Roman world. His engagement with some of the more recent and theoretically informed scholarship in the field is somewhat limited.[3]
In summary, this book brings up interesting questions and paths for future research for scholars of ancient medicine. It will introduce the general public and undergraduates to a variety of topics and current debates in the field and to a wide range of evidence and scholarship. It does so from a particular perspective, with a narrow biomedical definition of efficacy to go with the breadth of ancient healing endeavours, a good starting point for further discussion.
Notes
[1] Other overviews include: Guido Majno, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975); Ernst Künzl. Medizin in der Antike: Aus einer Welt ohne Narkose und Aspirin. (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2002); Helen King and Veronique Dasen, La Médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. (Lausanne: Bibliothèque d’histoire de la médecine et de la santé, 2008) and Ido Israelowich, Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011).
[2] See e.g. Laurence Totelin, Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth- Century Greece (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 219–224; John Scarborough, Pharmacy and Drug Lore in Antiquity: Greece, Rome, Byzantium. (London: Routledge, 2024), 10–12 & 150–154.
[3] For more “critical disability studies” approaches see e.g. Jane Draycott, “Reconstructing the lived experience of Disability in Antiquity: A Case Study from Roman Egypt,” Greece and Rome 62 (2015): 189–205 and Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022); and see now also Hannah Vogel, “Disability Studies: An Introduction for Egyptology”, in Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology: All Our Yesterdays, ed. Alexandra Morris and Hannah Vogel (London: Routledge, 2025), 9–25.