The majority of surviving ancient medical literature was written by medical
practitioners and produced for the purpose of ensuring the effective
diagnosis and treatment of their patients, suggesting an audience of
medical professionals ranging from instructors to students. This has led
historians to concentrate on the professional medical practitioner and
their theories, methods and practices, rather than on lay medical practitioners,
or even patients themselves. This chapter seeks to redress this
imbalance, and examine the ancient literary and documentary evidence
for lay medical theories, methods and practices in the Roman Republic
and Empire in an attempt to reconstruct the experiences of lay medical
practitioners and their patients. The Roman agricultural treatises of Cato,
Varro and Columella, papyri and ostraca from Egypt, and tablets from
Britain are investigated, and it is established that the individual’s personal
acquisition of knowledge and expertise, not only from medical professionals
and works of medical literature, but also from family members
and friends, and through trial and error, was considered fundamental to
domestic medical practice
