ANCIENT THEORIES OF DISEASE

 Ancient Cultures understood the human body in terms of:

- relationship to the environment
-the cosmos and;
- the Gods who watched over them and had the power to determine sickness or health

 Ancient Chinese Medicine

-Illness was caused by malevolent ghosts, ancestors, karma and sin.

 Hebrew Bible
- sees a similar combination of the sacred and secular.
-God is the physician of his people yet physicians carried out their healing work as human agents
of God’s will.

 Greece(5th Century)
-The cult of Aescelepius coexisted with Hippocatic Medicine
-generally believed that disease was brought about by divine visitation.

 Aesclepius
-Greek God of medicine; understood to possess a mythical healing power

 Aescelepius Temple
-where sick people enter and perform ritual sacrifices and prayer.
- a dreamlike state where instruction for easing suffering.

 The Cult of Aescelepius

-stood for centuries as the principal pagan response to disease.

 Epilepsy was the called “Sacred Disease”

 Hippocratic Approach to Medicine(Humoral theory)

-Dominated European medical thought(19th century)
-the world was in balance when its basic components corresponded properly to each other.
 The humors(yellow bile, blood, phlegm,black bile)
 The season( winter, summer, spring, fall)
 The elements(earth, fire, air, water)
 The phase of life( childhood, youth, adulthood, old aged.
 The Qualities( cool, hot, dry)
 Temperaments( choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholy)

 The preponderance of any given humor was thought to be at the root of illness

 Disease was thus understood as a condition of imbalance rather than as a specfic pathological
entity. Humoral imbalance, however, was itself caused by factors such as an unhealthy
environment, individual predisposition and hygienic regimen.

 Greek physicians focused their attention on patients that could kill quickly;
-pneumonia, mumps, malaria, puerperal fever.

 Tuberculosis -one of the most destructive diseases in the ancient world.

 Phthisis -greek word for consumption.

  Hippocrates theorized that consumption developed when external factors (climate, diet,
exercises) combined with an individual’s predisposition to the disease.

 Chronic Diseases – those that lasted longer than 60 days—were rarely mentioned, diagnosed or
treated.

 Roman Physician Galen (129-210 CE) built on the Hippocratic corpus, which had evolved
throughout the Hellenistic period (343-146 BCE).

 Galen believed with Hippocrates, that the healer should restore a proper balance by treating
one quality with its opposite.

 Galen saw most disease as the consequence of a faulty regimen, and hence avoidable. A healthy
life thus became a moral obligation, and a man with healthy constitution was responsible for
growing experience sickness or pain.

 Hippocrates and Galen pursuit of medical truth was not incompatible with religious explanation-
in fact, Galen believed that Aesclepius had saved him from near-fatal disease- but their
approach to health was grounded in empiricism and a holistic approach to the understanding of
the cosmos.

 Humoral theory and Galenism – also coexisted alongside a growing miasmatic theory, which
attributed disease to poisonous vapors arising from swamplands and various polluted waters.

DISEASE IN THE MIDDLE AGES(400-1300)

 Leprosy
-The disease that attracted the most attention during the medieval period
-offers a striking example of the way in which theology shaped social conceptions of disease.
-known today as Hansen’s disease after the scientist who first discover the infectious
microorganism mycobacterium leprae in 1847.
-causes chronic, painful and debilitating skin infection that can lead to the loss of fingers, toes
and facial features.
-Medieval authors thought that leprosy was the same as what in Leviticus 13-14 identified as
“Repulsive scaly skin-disease”
-became stigmatized as unclean, nauseating, disgusting individuals.
-Suddenly disappeared from Europe around 1300
 Bubonic Plague(Black Death)
- rampaged through Asia before sweeping westward across the Middle East to North Africa and
Europe.
- Pandemic of 1347, Europe lost approx. 20M of people.
- Rodent disease in which microorganism, Yersinia Pestis, infects rodents. Then Bubonic form of
plague strikes humans infected fleas choose a human instead of another rodent host wherein
the bacillus enters the bloodstream which causes swelling (bubo) in the neck, groin or armpit.
-at 14th century, the plague was thought to be a form of hurmoral imbalance that resulted to
“miasma”
MEDICAL RENAISSANCE

 1525, a new Greek translation of Galen’s collected works led to renewed reverence and even a
slavish obedience to te Galenic and Hippocratic tradition
 Some medical humanists restored texts to establish the authority of ancient Greek and Roman
masters, others offered a “new science” in place of tradition.
 1943-1542- first significant challenge came from Swiss polymath Paracelcus.
 Paracelcus, rejected both humoral theory and the elemental queatet of earth, wind, air and fire.
-he instead advocated a natural philosophy based on the chemical substances salt, mercury and
sulfur.
 Paracelsians insisted on cure by similitude.
 16th to 17th century- more diseases came out such as typhus, many unidentified fevers and
especially syphilis.
 Syphilis- also known as “the pox” or “the great pox” which spread out in the early 1500 and
behaved like a disease that no one had seen before,.
 Syphilis is now understood to be an STD caused by Treponema Palladium which was discovered
in 1905.
-Syphilis shows symptoms that include skin lessions, skeletal aches and genital rashes.
-in the fainal stage, it can damageseveral organ systems and may lead to dementia.
 During this era, debated raged over what caused this terrible outbreak,
 Galenic theory held that the pox was a humoral disorder with phlegm by spitting or sweating.
 Paracelcus, on the other hand, advocated rubbing “Arabic Ointment”.