No abstract

No abstract

Blood-letting was a common therapeutic method in antiquity; many means were used to draw blood, including the application of leeches. In this paper, ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine authors up to the 7th century AD were studied, a research that provided us with references that may be divided into two groups: those related to the medicinal use of leeches, and those related to cases in which leeches were swallowed and had to be removed. In the first group, detailed descriptions of the method of usage and of the diseases requiring leeching were found. In the second group, brief reference is made to the problems caused by swallowing leeches, and to the methods used to expel them from the human organism. The earliest references to the medicinal use of leeches may be found in the writings of Theocritus (3rd century BC), Nicander (2nd century BC) and Horace (1st century BC, while the phenomenon of swallowing a leech is first mentioned in one of the Epidaurian 'iamata' dating to the 4th century BC.

In classical antiquity, particularly in the Hippocratic Corpus, obesity was considered the cause of disease and, in the extreme, death. This attitude mirrors the general ideology of the times where any deviation from the norm and from logic was unacceptable. The image of balance and of the ideal body weight was clearly depicted in ancient Greek art. The same attitude is reflected in the Hippocratic texts where obesity is again condemned as a deviation from the norm. The cause of obesity refers to the surplus of one of the liquids circulating in the body. Thus treatment points mainly to restoring the balance of liquids. This is accomplished by diet, drugs, and most importantly exercise. Walking, running, wrestling, and other practices are advised together with baths, massage, rest, and the "appropriate" life style.

The Hippocratic physicians were among the first who described jaundice (icterus). The Hippocratic Corpus has numerous appearances of the condition, where its etiology, description, prognosis, and treatment are provided. The connection made between the liver and jaundice was remarkable, bearing in mind that the Hippocratic physicians had not performed dissections and that their medical views were based on observation. The Hippocratic doctors described five kinds of jaundice. The etiology was, as in most cases of diseases mentioned in the Hippocratic Corpus, "humoral" imbalance. The diagnosis and prognosis were based on the color of the skin, the urine, the feces, and several other factors, such as the season of the year during which the disease first appeared or the coexisting diseases. The treatment, finally, consisted of herbal medications, baths, diet, and blood-letting, depending on the type of jaundice in question. Finally, an attempt is made to correlate modern diseases with the Hippocratic types of jaundice.