Greek medicine

The level of drug usage achieved by the Egyptians undoubtedly had a great influence on Greek medicine and literature. Observations on the medical effects of... 

Four humors as in ancient Greek medicine — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — semigaseous vapors that maintain body fluids and balance digestion (Thomas, 1997 and General References). 

The death of Galen ( 216 ad) marked the beginning of the transition of Western (i.e., Greek) medicine into monastic medical practice that resided in the hands of monks and was a part of their divine mission. As a result, the study of toxicology as a system of knowledge came to a halt in the Christian world... 

Paul of Aegina was the last of the physicians of the Byzantine culture to practice in Alexandria, which fell to the Arabs in his professional lifetime in 642 ad. He refers to both mithridatium and ther-iac. Paul of Aegina was a link between Greek medicine and Mohammedan medicine. His book was used by Rhazes (854-930 ad), one of the greatest of the Arab physicians. Avicenna (980-1037 ad) approved of mithridatium as an antidote to poisons, and Maimonides, a Jew bom in Moslem Spain, was also familiar with mithridatium. Mithridatium re-entered Western medicine culture by two routes. A Saxon leechbook of the eleventh century records that Abel, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, sent mithridatium or theriac to King Alfred the Great, who died on 26 October 899 (Stenton, 1947). 

While medical mysticism (and mystical medicine) is so ancient that much of the story is lost, many of the story threads are known. Not unexpectedly, these stories begin, or meet, in India, a traditional home of most things mystical. However, it must first be said that there is no implication that mystical methods are a hallmark of primitive or isolated civilization, and that ancient India knew no better. Ancient India appears to have experimented with, and maintained both approaches of its own and those imported from abroad. It did not lie off the mainstream of protoscientific Greek medicine that we associate with Hippocrates and later Galen and the Arabic culture. Long before the rise of modern medicine, the Middle East and Indian subcontinent had a particular discipline of medicine that followed essentially a scientific thread that may be traced to Greek medicine as it was further developed by the Arabs. 

Much more than that, it is believed that the Indian peoples themselves contributed greatly to the early development of Greek medicine. India played a very early role in producing therapies that the ancient Greeks subsequently employed (the Greeks, however, were not content with borrowing they subjected new therapeutic measures to their own tests before they adopted them). The Muslims are said to still respect the Indian origin of a major aspect of... 

On Greek medicine, the first following is a classic, the other two excellent orientations ... 

Galen, De constitutione artis medicae ad Patrophilum, in Opera omnia, ed. C. G. Kuhn (Leipzig Cnobloch, 1821—1833), 1 303 and Arsmedica, in Opera omnia, 1 378.1 owe these references to a kind communication from Heinrich von Staden. On the probable derivation of Aristotle s idea from Greek medicine, see Augustin Mansion, Introduction a la physique aristotelicienne (Louvain Editions de rinstitut Superieur, 1945), 197—198, 257. 

Padel similarly finds in Greek medicine and literature a general notion that women endanger men by being enterable ( Women Model for Possession , ii). 

Longrigg, James. Greek Medicine From the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age. New York Roudedge, 1998. 

Ephedrine (Fig. 10.15) is found in the Chinese herb Ma Huang, which has been used in Chinese medicine for 3000 years. It was also used in Greek medicine. Its stmctural resemblance to adrenaline and noradrenaline is readily apparent. It was used in the treatment of asthma hut has heen superseded by selective P2 agonists such as salhutamol. Its main application is as a nasal decongestant by promoting noradrenaline release, thus causing constriction of hlood vessels in the nasal mucosa. It also has weak P-agonist aaivity. Its other actions are discussed in Chapter 18. 

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