Thessalus of Tralleis

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Thessalus von Tralleis († 79 at the latest) was a successful doctor in the first half of the first century AD. He lived and worked in Rome and, as Themison's successor, was the leading representative of the medical school of methodologists .

The few known facts of his life are narrated by Galen and Pliny the Elder . Thessalus came from Tralleis and, as the son of a little wealthy (μοχδηρώς = miserable, sorrowful) father, spent his youth plucking wool in the women's refuge. Nevertheless, he managed to become a well-known doctor who was successful as a practitioner. He addressed a letter to Emperor Nero in which he boasted that he had founded a medical school that surpassed all previous ones. The entourage with which he appeared in public surpassed that of the actors and racing drivers of his time and he had his tomb on the Via Appia marked iatronicen (conqueror of doctors, winner of all doctors).

Caelius Aurelianus describes him as unus e principibus nostris , that is, as one of the leading physicians among methodologists. He also quotes from two books by Thessalus ( De regulis , "On the healthy way of life") and mentions a book on surgery. Overall, however, he does not name Thessalus as often as other doctors among the methodologists, and also shows him treatment errors and even proterua festinatio (= irresponsible haste).

Galen, too, often speaks negatively about Thesallos, especially about his teaching activities: he is indignant that he promises to teach the medical art to several students at the same time in six months. However, Galen's negative judgment is not free from professional envy. Thessalus further developed the methodical school, in particular the separation of the treatment of acute and chronic diseases.

Nothing has survived from the works of Thessalus, which Galen also mentions. After Caelius Aurelianus he is no longer mentioned. The astrological-medical treatise that has been preserved and which was associated with Thessalus is unlikely to have come from him.

swell

  • Caelius Aurelianus: De morbis acutis et chronicis , edited by Gerhard Bendz , Berlin, 1990.
  • Galen: Claudii Galeni opera omnia , edited by Karl Gottlob Kühn , Leipzig, 1821.
  • C. Plinius Secundus the Elder, Naturkunde Buch XXIX, edited and translated by Roderich König in collaboration with Joachim Hopp, Darmstadt, 1991.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Galen, Volume XIV, Galeno ascripta Instructio seu Medicus , Cap. IV.
  2. ^ Galen, Volume X, Galeni Methodi Medendi , Liber I, Cap. II.
  3. ↑ Jutta Kollesch , Diethard Nickel : Ancient healing art. Selected texts from the medical writings of the Greeks and Romans (= Reclam's Universal Library. Volume 771). 6th edition. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-379-00411-1 , p. 18 f. and 51.
  4. ^ Galen, Volume X, Galeni Methodi Medendi , Liber I, Cap. II.
  5. ^ Pliny, Natural History , Book XXIX, 9.
  6. ↑ Caelius Aurelianus, De morbis acutis II, Chapter 37.
  7. ↑ Caelius Aurelianus, De morbis chronicis II, 1st chapter.
  8. ^ Galen, Volume X, Galeni Methodi Medeni , Liber I, Cap II.
  9. ↑ Theodor Meyer-Steineg: The medical system of methodologists , Thessalos von Tralles
  10. ↑ RE, Thessalus .
personal data
SURNAME Thessalus of Tralleis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman doctor
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 1st century