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Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece: Between Craft and Cult

Amazon.com Price:  $47.13 (as of 03/05/2019 06:46 PST- Details)

Description

Delving deeply into ancient medical history, Bronwen L. Wickkiser explores the early development and later spread of the cult of Asklepios, some of the popular healing gods in the ancient Mediterranean. Though Asklepios had been referred to as a healer because the time of Homer, evidence suggests that large numbers of people started to flock to the cult all over the fifth century BCE, just as practitioners of Hippocratic medicine were gaining dominance.

Drawing on close readings of period medical texts, literary sources, archaeological evidence, and earlier studies, Wickkiser finds two primary causes for the cult’s ascendance: it filled a gap out there created by the refusal of Hippocratic physicians to treat difficult chronic ailments and it abetted Athenian political needs. Wickkiser supports these challenging theories with side-by-side examinations of the medical practices at Asklepios’ sanctuaries and those espoused in Hippocratic medical treatises. She also explores how Athens’ aspirations to empire influenced its decision to open the city to the healer-god’s cult.

In that specialize in the fifth century and by taking into consideration the medical, political, and non secular dimensions of the cult of Asklepios, Wickkiser presents a complex, nuanced picture of Asklepios’ rise in popularity, Athenian society, and ancient Mediterranean culture. The intriguing and infrequently surprising information she presents will be valued by historians of medicine and classicists alike.


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