Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum

Medicine is one of the great achievements of the ancient Greeks. This lecture will discuss the new skill which some of their first medical writers believed they had invented. Among their most admired writings are seven books now known as Epidemics, a title which seems especially relevant during the current pandemic. The lecture will focus on the earliest two books, and will argue that they are even earlier than any scholar has previously realised. That contention has wider relevance, not just for the development of medicine but for the wider context of Greek thinking, including drama, philosophy and history writing. It obliges us to rethink the change from an archaic to a classical age and even to reconsider the date of the famous Hippocrates, known as the 'father of medicine'.