Asclepiades of Bithynia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Asklepiades of Bithynia (also Asklepiades of Prusa and Asklepiades of Prusias ; * around 124 BC in Prusa / today in the province of Bursa ; his native city was also called Prusias ad Mare and Kios , in Bithynia , Asia Minor ; † 60 BC . in Rome ) was a Greek doctor and philosopher of the late Hellenism , who worked in Rome and made Greek medicine settled there in the Roman Empire .

Asklepiades studied rhetoric , philosophy and medicine. About 91 BC He came to Rome, where he practiced successfully as a doctor after an unsuccessful career in rhetoric. He preferred simple remedies such as diet, exercise, baths, sweating and water cures, with which he also treated mental disorders (mental illnesses, apart from “obsession”, were still unknown in the humoral pathological system of the time). Thus he became the founder of hydrotherapy ( balneotherapy ). However, the direction of solidarity pathology ( Erasistratos ) introduced by Asklepiades could not replace the theory of humours .

One of his controversial theses was that nature is not only without reason and art, but downright harmful.

He was the inventor of passive movement , which consisted of trips on wagons, ships and the like. Asklepiades founded the Methodical School of Medicine ( Methodiker , old Gr. Μεθοδικοί), which flourished until the end of the Roman Empire. His teachings were very modern, and he is therefore considered a pioneer in physiotherapy, psychotherapy and molecular medicine, since for him, influenced by Democritus , the distribution of atoms and their transport through the pores were essential for the state of health. He made a distinction between acute and chronic diseases. His most important student was Themison of Laodikeia . Asklepiades is also considered the inventor of the tracheotomy , the tracheal incision.

Asklepiades was never significantly ill and died in an accident. Only a few fragments of his work have survived.

reception

Aklepiades is portrayed under the name Asklepiodes by John Maddox Roberts in his novel series SPQR as a friend of the protagonist Decius Caecilius Metellus .

literature

Remarks

  1. Jutta Kollesch , Diethard Nickel : Ancient healing art. Selected texts from the medical writings of the Greeks and Romans. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1979 (= Reclams Universal Library. Volume 771); 6th edition ibid 1989, ISBN 3-379-00411-1 , p. 9 f.
  2. ^ Robert Ritter von Welz : Des Asclepiades von Bithynien health regulations, for the first time completely edited and explained according to the existing manuscripts , medical dissertation, Würzburg 1841
  3. Jutta Kollesch , Diethard Nickel : Ancient healing art. Selected texts from the medical writings of the Greeks and Romans. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1979 (= Reclams Universal Library. Volume 771); 6th edition ibid 1989, ISBN 3-379-00411-1 , p. 15.
  4. ^ Caelius Aurelianus of Sicca Veneria , De morbis chronicis ( On chronic diseases ) III, 8, p. 469
  5. Brandt L and Goerig M: The history of the tracheotomy. Part 1. Anaesthesiologist 35: 279-283, 1986.