Medicine and the Body in Antiquity
About the Book Series
Medicine and the Body in Antiquity is a series which fosters interdisciplinary research that broadens our understanding of past beliefs about the body and its care. The intention of the series is to use evidence drawn from diverse sources (textual, archaeological, epigraphic) in an interpretative manner to gain insights into the medical practices and beliefs of the ancient Mediterranean. The series approaches medical history from a broad thematic perspective that allows for collaboration between specialists from a wide range of disciplines outside ancient history and archaeology such as art history, religious studies, medicine, the natural sciences and music. The series will also aim to bring research on ancient medicine to the attention of scholars concerned with later periods. Ultimately this series provides a forum for scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explore ideas about the body and medicine beyond the confines of current scholarship.
For further information about contributing to the series please contact Dr Patricia Baker at [email protected].
Selling Pharmaka, Buying Health in Ancient Greece and Rome: Retail Therapy
1st Edition
By Laurence Totelin
April 14, 2026
This book examines Greek and Roman pharmacology in its mercantile dimensions, studying the people who were involved in the trade, the places where they worked, and the consumers whom they tried to attract through promises of health. In the ancient Mediterranean, selling pharmacological substances ...
Health, Lifestyle, and Elite Culture in Greek and Roman Times
1st Edition
By Konstantine Panegyres
February 03, 2026
This book examines how elite literary authors conceived of the relationship between health and lifestyle in the Graeco-Roman world. Through careful analysis of a wide range of ancient literary sources, provided in both the original Greek and Latin and in English translation, the book explores what...
Sleep and Dreams in Early Greek Thought: Presocratic and Hippocratic Approaches
1st Edition
By Stephanie Holton
October 04, 2024
This book examines how sleep and dreams were approached in early Greek thought, highlighting the theories of the Presocratic and Hippocratic writers on both phenomena as more varied, complex, and substantial than is usually credited. It explores how the Presocratic natural philosophers and early ...
Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures: Sickness, Health, and Local Epistemologies
1st Edition
Edited
By Ulrike Steinert
August 01, 2022
Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical disease concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness from antiquity to the seventeenth century. Focusing on the systematisation and ...
Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy: From the Middle Republic to the Early Empire
1st Edition
By Jane Draycott
September 30, 2021
Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy examines the roles that the home, the garden and the members of the household (freeborn, freed and slave) played in the acquisition and maintenance of good physical and mental health and well-being. Focussing on the period from the middle Republic to...
Becoming a Woman and Mother in Greco-Roman Egypt: Women’s Bodies, Society and Domestic Space
1st Edition
By Ada Nifosi
December 18, 2020
How did Greco-Roman Egyptian society perceive women’s bodies and how did it acknowledge women’s reproductive functions? Detailing women’s lives in Greco-Roman Egypt this monograph examines understudied aspects of women's lives such as their coming of age, social and religious taboos of menstruation...
Prostheses in Antiquity
1st Edition
Edited
By Jane Draycott
December 18, 2020
Today, a prosthesis is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, generally designed and assembled according to the individual’s appearance and functional needs with a view to being both as unobtrusive and as useful as possible. In classical antiquity, however, this was not necessarily...
Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives Past, Present and Future
1st Edition
Edited
By Jane Draycott, Emma-Jayne Graham
June 30, 2020
Dedicating objects to the divine was a central component of both Greek and Roman religion. Some of the most conspicuous offerings were shaped like parts of the internal or external human body: so-called ‘anatomical votives’. These archaeological artefacts capture the modern imagination, recalling ...
Hippocratic Oratory: The Poetics of Early Greek Medical Prose
1st Edition
By James Cross
June 30, 2020
On Ancient Medicine, On the Art, On Breaths, On the Nature of Human Beings and On the Sacred Disease are among the most well-known and sophisticated works of the Hippocratic Collection. The authors of these treatises were seeking to find means to express their arguments that built on authoritative ...
Tertullian and the Unborn Child: Christian and Pagan Attitudes in Historical Perspective
1st Edition
By Julian Barr
June 30, 2020
Tertullian of Carthage was the earliest Christian writer to argue against abortion at length, and the first surviving Latin author to consider the unborn child in detail. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Tertullian’s attitude towards the foetus and embryo. Examining Tertullian’s ...