Reggiani Nicola

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BMCRBryn Mawr Classical ReviewBMCR 2022.06.02Medicine and markets in the Graeco-Romanworld and beyond: essays on ancientmedicine in honour of Vivian NuttonLaurence M.V. Totelin, Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world andbeyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour of Vivian Nutton. Swansea: The Classical Press ofWales, 2020. Pp. 250. ISBN 9781910589786 £58,00.Review byNicola Reggiani, University of Parma. nicola.reggiani@unipr.itPreview[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]This volume is a collection of essays dealing with the economic aspects of ancient medicine andits presence in the ancient marketplace, offered in honour of Vivian Nutton and developing keythemes from his pioneering scholarship in the history of medicine.After an introduction devoted to the multifaceted contributions of the honorand and a briefsummary of the book’s contents, the pricing and circulation of medical products and skills arethe themes of the first part of the volume, titled “Prices and Exchanges.”The general framework of the complex relationship between medicine and money in theRoman age is investigated by Véronique Boudon-Millot in the first essay (“The Cost of Health:Rich and Poor in Imperial Rome”). While Galen philosophically disdained wealth as the goal ofhigh-quality medicine and promoted an aristocratic view of liberal medicine in his polemicagainst Thessalus, who was accused of practicing medicine in order to become wealthy and torise socially, the actual costs of medicine for both the physicians and the patients were a keyconcern in everyday practice. Apart from the cost of years of training and of common articlesthat could be charged to the patients, competition among rival physicians in the race to acquirerare books, exotic and expensive ingredients or remedies, and refined instruments also droveup costs, as the author interestingly underlines. The expenses of the patients comprised thecosts of the therapies and the physician’s remuneration, which is discussed and defined asvarying according to different situations—a salary, a gift, a tip, and so on.The next contribution, by Laurence Totelin (“Healing Correspondence: Letters and RemedyExchange in the Graeco-Roman World “), explores the papyrological attestations of thecirculation of medicaments in everyday life. First, the sending of medical recipes by letter isexamined in the most famous case of the exchange of remedies between Chairas and Dionysius(P.Merton I 12), who appear to be colleagues. The example is paralleled by literary casesdescribed by Galen, although sometimes it is difficult to ascertain whether the recipe or theactual medicine (φάρμακον) was exchanged. The “relatively few sources attesting to theexchange of recipes by letter” (p. 21) may be integrated with (1) the statement that manysummary recipes attested on papyrus (e.g., with the list of ingredients and quantities only) couldhave been accompanied by covering letters like that of Chairas, explaining the therapeuticscope and the usage of the medicament in more detail; (2) the witness of PSI IV 297 (Hermopolis,V century AD), a papyrus strip written on both sides with a patient’s letter (recto) and a medicalprescription (verso). The letter was written by a patient to his doctor to complain that theMedicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world and beyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour ... https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.06.02/1 di 3 ven 03 06 2022, 20:53physician had abandoned him with a plaster that prevented him from washing himself, whichresulted in a bad smell. The recipe prescribed an aromatic lotion known as οἰνανθάριον (Paul.VII 21, 2–3 = 392, 9–24 Heiberg) and can be regarded as the physician’s response to the patient’scomplaint,[1] providing thus a further example of the exchange of medical prescriptions byletter. The second theme addressed by Totelin relates to letters accompanying, promising, orrequesting specific drugs or ingredients, which sometimes attest to the commercial circulationof medicines. Totelin notes, however that, as is usual with the papyrological evidence, it isalmost always difficult to extract general data from the very specific and personal letters.A short contribution by John Scarborough (“Dioscorides on Beavers”) addresses one of the mostnotorious medical ingredients in antiquity, καστόρειον (beaver castor), integrating a recentstudy presented by Martin Devecka with a reference to Dioscorides, who instructs againstcounterfeited products and refutes the legendary tale about beavers self-castrating to escapetheir hunters.The final contribution of the first part is a very thorough essay by Antonio Ricciardetto andDanielle Gourevitch investigating the economic aspects of wet-nursing in Roman Egypt throughthe papyrological sources (“The Cost of a Baby: How Much Did It Cost to Hire a Wet-Nurse inRoman Egypt?”). This chapter is remarkable not only for the extensive examination of the wet-nurse contracts attested on papyrus, but also for the wide apparatus of notes, which deal withmany details about the texts and their historical, social, and legal context.The second section of the volume, titled “Pluralism and Diversity,” features contributionsdealing with the heterogeneous practices available in the ancient medical marketplace.In the first essay (“A Return to Cases and the Pluralism of Ancient Medical Traditions “), G.E.R.Lloyd examines a range of different approaches to medical case history—in terms of style andpurposes—as attested in different cultural contexts. Comparing ancient Egyptian (the Eberspapyrus), classical Chinese (Chunyu Yi’s biography), and a variety of Greek texts (the healinginscriptions at the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the Hippocratic treatises, Galen’s Prognosis) thatenumerate and describe clinical cases, the author effectively distinguishes—in seeminglysimilar sources—different attitudes and goals, from the more ‘personal’ aims of defending orpromoting the physician’s (or the god’s) own skills to the more ‘technical’ purposes of creatingan objective and honest ‘database’ of medical knowledge.In the next chapter (“Malaria, Childbirth and the Cult of Artemis”), Elizabeth Craik surveys therelationship between the cult of Artemis and pregnancy-associated malaria, with detailedintroductions about the illness, its ancient incidence, and ‘rational’ treatments found in theHippocratic treatises.With Robert Arnott’s contribution (“Medicine, Markets and Movement in the Bronze AgeMediterranean: a Mycenaean Healing Deity at Hattuša-Boğazköy”), we move from the Graeco-Roman context to an earlier world, exploring attestations and contexts of Bronze Age healers—both human and divine—and their ‘movement’ from one place to another in the Minoan andMycenaean ‘marketplace.’After stepping back to the Bronze Age, next, we leap forward to late Republican Rome in thenext two contributions. Ann E. Hanson (“Antistius Medicus and the Ides of March”) argues thatthe visit paid by doctor Antistius to Julius Caesar’s home some hours after his assassination in44 BC is not a signal that Caesar retained a medical professional in his entourage according tothe common aristocratic habit. Rather, Antistius’ examination was intended for reference incourt—due to the need for a juridical resolution of the crisis –, much as the inspections of deador injured people by ‘public’ physicians that are attested in papyri from Roman Egypt.[2]David Leith (“Notes on Three Asclepiadean Doctors”) discusses three members of the medicalsect founded by Asclepiades of Bithynia, the physician who first brought Greek theoreticalmedicine to Rome in the late II century BC: Philonides of Dyrrachium, Marcus Artorius, andLusius. Leith’s valuable insight into their careers restores the importance of their medicalMedicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world and beyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour ... https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.06.02/2 di 3 ven 03 06 2022, 20:53thought in the Roman medical marketplace.Finally, a novel contribution by Helen King (“Hippocratic Whispers: Telling the Story of the Lifeof Hippocrates on the Internet”) explores how the legend of Hippocrates is recovered andupdated with new imaginary details in contemporary digital media, where claims of authorityare not necessary in order to create accepted facts.The volume concludes with a general bibliography (somehow more difficult to handle thanseparate bibliographies appended to each chapter), a bibliography of Vivian Nutton’spublications, and a useful index of words and names. It is certainly a new valuable acquisitionin the field of the history of ancient medicine, showing that it was not only a matter of scientifictheories and of practical techniques, but also a living part of the society, its economy, and itsculture.Table of ContentsRebecca Flemming, Introduction: Vivian Nutton and the Rise of Ancient Medicine (pp. xix-xxx)Véronique Boudon-Millot, The Cost Of Health: Rich and Poor in Imperial Rome (pp. 1-16)Laurence M.V. Totelin, Healing Correspondence: Letters and Remedy Exchange in the Graeco-Roman World  (pp. 17-36)John Scarborough, Dioscorides on Beavers (pp. 37-40)Antonio Ricciardetto and Danielle Gourevitch, The Cost of a Baby: How Much Did It Cost to Hirea Wet-Nurse in Roman Egypt? (pp. 41-70)Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, A Return to Cases and the Pluralism of Ancient Medical Traditions (pp.71-86)Elizabeth Craik, Malaria, Childbirth and the Cult of Artemis (pp. 87-100)Robert Arnott, Medicine, Markets and Movement in the Bronze Age Mediterranean: AMycenaean Healing Deity at Hattuša-Boğazköy (pp. 101-112)Ann Ellis Hanson, Antistius Medicus and the Ides of March (pp. 113-126)David Leith, Notes on Three Asclepiadean Doctors (pp. 127-142)Helen King, Hippocratic Whispers: Telling the Story of the Life of Hippocrates on the Internet(pp. 143-160)Notes[1] Cf. already M.L. De Courten, Una lettera ad un medico e una ricetta in un papiro greco del Vsec. d. C. (PSI 297), “Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo di Lettere” (ser. II) 50 (1917), 212–219: pp.218–219, and my new edition of the prescription in the forthcoming Greek Medical Papyri III, ed.by N. Reggiani, Florence 2022.[2] Ann Hanson is kind enough to refer to a list of such medical reports compiled by myself,though she points to an older handout available on Academia.edu (from a conference datingback to 2014) rather than to more recent bibliography, which is perhaps worth noting here: N.Reggiani, I papiri greci di medicina come fonti storiche: il caso dei rapporti dei medici pubblicinell’Egitto greco-romano, “Aegyptus” 98 (2018), 107–130; N. Reggiani, Ispezioni e perizie ufficialinell’Egitto romano: il corpusdei rapporti professionali (prosphōnēseis), in Lavoro, lavoratori edinamiche sociali a Roma antica: persistenze e trasformazioni. Atti delle giornate di studio (RomaTre, 25-26 maggio 2017), ed. A. Marcone, Rome 2018, 194–211; A. Ricciardetto, La réponse dumédecin: les rapports d’inspection médicale écrits en grec sur papyrus (Ier-IVe siècles), in AncientGreek Medicine in Questions and Answers. Diagnostics, Didactics, Dialectics, ed. M. Meeusen,Leiden 2020, 133–153.Medicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world and beyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour ... https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.06.02/3 di 3 ven 03 06 2022, 20:53

Medicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world and beyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour of Vivian Nutton (Recensione a: Laurence M.V. Totelin, Rebecca Flemming, Medicine and markets in the Graeco-Roman world and beyond: essays on ancient medicine in honour of Vivian Nutton. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2020. Pp. 250. ISBN 9781910589786 £58,00)

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