Ancient Greek God Research Articles

BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE SUBSTANCES OF THE LAURUS NOBILIS LEAVES

Laurus nobilis L. is an evergreen dioecious, rarely monecious plant up to 12-15 m high. The plant’s name is devoted to an Ancient Greek God of Sun Apollo and is a symbol of peace and victory. It was used in making up wreaths for emperors, generals, and poets. Its natural area includes Mediterranean countries with high level of annual precipitation. It is actively cultivated as a decorative plant in Europe, Russia, USA and other countries. It is cultivated in Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Russia, and Mexico. The aim of the study is the review of available literature about isolation, identification, quantitative determination of biologically active compounds of the Laurus nobilis leaves in the established species and their pharmacological activity. Materials and methods. The study was carried out using searching (PubMed, CiteSeer, arXiv), library databases (eLibrary, Cyberleninka), and ResearchGate free social network. Results and discussion. We have established that Laurus nobilis leaves have components of essential oil, phenolic compounds, and sesquiterpenic lactones as the principal active substances. Qualitative composition and quantitative content of these compound groups in these raw materials varies depending on the ecological and geographical, edaphic, climatic factors, phase of the plant growth, cultivation technology, drying method etc. The results of the pharmacological studies of the extracts, summary fractions, and individual compounds of Laurus nobilis leaves characterize this type of raw materials as a perspective source for a more profound study. Conclusion. As the available open review data showed, the essential oil components, phenolic compounds (phenolic acids, flavonoids, etc), sesquiterpenic lactones of Laurus nobilis exhibit a diverse spectrum of pharmacological activity. Antimicrobial (widely), anti-virus, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, and cytoxic (anticancer) activities, established in extracts, certain fractions, and individual compounds of Laurus leaves compounds are perspective from the point of further studies and development of new treatment and preventive medicinal drugs.

Asclepius’ Myths and Healing Narratives: Counter-Intuitive Concepts and Cultural Expectations

This article suggests a bio-cultural approach to the Asclepius cult in order to explore the attractiveness and memorability of the religious ideas, myths, and narratives about the divine healer. The transformation of Asclepius from a mortal doctor to a divine physician is traced in mythical sagas developed in Greek antiquity. The interference of local religious, political and financial interests in the formation of myths are briefly presented. Then, the focus is shifted to the inner features that were embedded in the myths and attracted people’s attention. Following Guthrie’s theory (1992), it is suggested that the anthropomorphic perception of the ancient Greek gods was projected onto Asclepius. Boyer’s theory (1996, 2001) of counter-intuitive concepts of religious ideas is applied to the myths of Asclepius. It is suggested that his actions, rather than the portrayal of his figure and character, are what violated human-intuitive expectations about the world, grabbing the attention of supplicants and becoming conserved in memory. Further, the correlation of intuitive ontological expectations and mundane knowledge acquired through cultural conditioning is examined. The healing inscriptions from the asclepieia seem to support the findings of research conducted by Porubanova-Norquist and her colleagues (2013, 2014), according to which violations of cultural expectations have similar effects in attention and memory processes as the counter-intuitive concepts. It is further suggested that the activity of Asclepius violated cultural expectations shared by people of the ancient Greek world. This activity was particularly salient because it pertained to human experiences of illness and disease, and revealed Asclepius’ willingness to help the sick.

ALLERGIC REACTIONS CAUSED BY VENOM OF HYMENOPTEROUS STINGING INSECTS AND THE ROLE OF HEALTH CARE WORKERS.

The Hymenoptera are the third largest order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. Worldwide, over 150,000 species are recognized, with many more remaining to be described. The name refers to the wings of the insects, but the original derivation is ambiguous. The Ancient Greek υμην (hymen) for membrane provides a pLusible etymology for the term because these insects have membranous wings. However, a key characteristic of this order is that the hind wings are connected to the fore wings by a series of hooks called hamuli. Thus, another plausible etymology involves, Hymen, the Ancient Greek god of marriage, as these insects have "married wings" in flight. Stinging insects and the medical risk associated with their venoms are complex topics, and presentation of information pertaining to them requires the use of technical terms. The most common reactions to these stings are transient pain and redness at the site lasting a few hours (local reaction), and exaggerated swelling lasting a few days (large local reaction). The most dangerous immediate reaction is anaphylaxis, which is potentially fatal.

Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present editor by Steven M. Oberhelman (review)

Reviewed by: Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present editor by Steven M. Oberhelman Peter S. Allen Steven M. Oberhelman, editor. Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present. Surrey, England/Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2013. 341 pp. Cloth £70/$119.95. Dreams are a part of everyone’s life. We try to interpret them, we try to control them, and we sometimes base important life decisions on them. Moreover, there is good evidence that we have been doing all of these things for a very long time. The authors of the articles in Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece chronicle such efforts among Greeks going back several thousand years. From early on, Greeks were not only concerned with dreams, but fortunately for subsequent generations, they wrote a great deal about dreams and their putative meanings. Dozens of sources are cited in these articles, attesting to the interest in dreams from early times to the present. Several themes emerge from these articles. Perhaps the most significant is the connection between dreams and health. Scattered all over the eastern Mediterranean were dozens of healing sites called Aesclepieia (after Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing) where people would go to find cures for various maladies. Dreams and the interpretation thereof played a prominent role in the diagnosis and treatment of virtually every ailment, both physical and psychological. From the earliest times for which we have records, close links between dreams, disease, and healing were clearly established. It is the multifarious ways in which these links were made and exploited that comprise most of the material in this volume. Such seminal figures as Hippocrates and Galen employed dream interpretation and dream therapy in their treatment of virtually all diseases. Inducing dreams and interpreting them were central features of their diagnoses and praxis. All of this is skillfully illuminated here by an international collection of scholars with true expertise on the subject. Antiquity Maithe Hulskamp considers the outlook on dreams of such figures as the Hippocratics and Galen, arguing that some ignored dream contents and focused only on dream types for the sole purpose of diagnosis, whereas others used dreams for both medical diagnosis and prognosis. She also maintains that Galen put less stock in dreams than most scholars believe. [End Page 452] Louise Cillers and François Pieter Retief distinguish between two types of dreams involved in medicine: prophetic dreams which were seen as messages from the gods and dreams with physical origins that could be employed for pragmatic and diagnostic purposes. They maintain, however, that at the Asclepieia these two types tended to merge with dreams being viewed as messages from the god specifically on medical matters. Similarities in a representation of “medical dreams” described in various Hippocratic texts and some from the Asclepieion of Epidauros are the subject of Lee Peavey’s astute contribution. Since the standard edition of the works of Hippocrates runs to ten volumes, Peavy is quite selective here, but extremely insightful. He focuses, in particular, on the interpretation of dreams for the purposes of diagnosis and prognosis. His essay is larded with excellent examples and commentary on them. Janet Downie’s piece focuses on the dream narratives contained in a single work, Hieroi Logoi, by Aelius Aristides, a second century AD orator whose two years at an Asclepieion in Pergamum are the source of his writings. Aristides is perhaps the sole individual from antiquity who wrote about his own dreams. On the basis of an examination of the language and syntax of the writing, Downie maintains that the interpretations of dreams in this text are different from the interpretations of others. Moreover, unlike some of his contemporaries, e.g., Galen and Artemidorus, Aristides addresses non-meaningful dreams quite extensively, applying the same interpretative devices as others did to more significant dreams. Artemidorus, a second century AD professional diviner, has left us with an important text on the interpretation of dreams in antiquity, the Oneirocritica, which is the subject of Christine Walde’s contribution. She chronicles the definition, frequency, and causes of illness contained therein with an emphasis on the role of dreams in predicting and diagnosing illness. She...

‘Shooting at the Sun God Apollo’: The Apollonian-Dionysian Balance of the TimeSlips Storytelling Project

In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche celebrated the dueling forces of reason and emotion as personified by the ancient Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. A subtle Apollonian-Dionysian balance can be observed in TimeSlips, a group-based creative storytelling activity developed in the 1990s and increasingly used in dementia care settings worldwide. This article explains how the Apollonion-Dionysian aspects of TimeSlips are beneficial not only for persons with dementia, but also for their carers. Narrative data from medical students at Penn State College of Medicine who participated in TimeSlips at a local retirement community are shared.

Oracles of Dionysos in Ancient Thrace

Abstract : The focus of the article is the available information about the oracles of Dionysos in ancient Thrace. After a careful analysis of the currently know sources the author states that in the ancient Thracian lands there was not only one or two (as most modern scholars assume) but several oracles of Dionysos. The author proves this point by giving a special attention to some details in the ancient information, such as the localization of the different oracles, the features of the mantic session, the officials etc. In conclusion is summed up that although the provided by the ancient writers’ more or less detailed information, oracles of Dionysos in Thrace are not yet localized. Key words: Ancient divination, Dionysos, oracles, Thrace.Dionysos, the famous ancient Greek god of vines and wine, was strongly connected with the Thracian lands. 1 In the following lines is paid attention to only one aspect of this connection – the available information about his oracles by the Thracians. The essential sources on this issue are only a few passages in the ancient literature, presented below.

The Rod and the Serpent: History’s Ultimate Healing Symbol

The snake has served as a medical emblem for more than 2400 years, since its association with the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing, Asclepius, in the 4th century BC. Its symbolic background can be traced further back to the worship of gods of earth's blossom in ancient Egypt and earth-related deities of the archaic period of Greek antiquity. It is featured entwined around a staff of knowledge and wisdom in most anaglyphs depicting Asclepius. The snake was impressed in the Old and the New Testament as well as in the Christian tradition as a symbol of sin, rejuvenation, death, resurrection, asthenia, and therapy. It is postulated that the double-snake motif was reintroduced by Renaissance philosophers as a medical emblem due to the symbolic connections of Hermes with deliverance and redemption. However, its use during the last two centuries seems to lack substantial historical background. The historical, mythological, and traditional retrospection of the snake's symbolism validates its appropriateness in the health-care field.

Mediation, manipulation, empowerment

This paper attempts a reading of the interpreter’s social and cultural role through a return to origins, to the ancient Greek god Hermes, who was, among other things, the mediator between gods and humans. Hermes’s ambivalent position and nature — conveying and at the same time manipulating the messages of the gods — are taken as a point of departure in order to highlight the complexity of the interpreting process. Interpreters, poised in the same liminal space of in-betweenness, are asked to promote communication, remaining faithful to the speaker and retaining for themselves an invisible presence (or absence?). The questions of invisibility and neutrality are further discussed in the second part of the paper, where Sydney Pollack’s film The Interpreter (2005) is taken as a case study. The lead character of the film, an interpreter, moves from perfect neutrality to full involvement in the interpreting process, and faces the consequences of this violation of an “omnipresent” ethical code that demands absence rather than presence on the part of the interpreter.

HEPHAISTOSITE, TlPb2Cl5, A NEW THALLIUM MINERAL SPECIES FROM LA FOSSA CRATER, VULCANO, AEOLIAN ISLANDS, ITALY

Hephaistosite, TlPb 2 Cl 5 , a newly discovered species of thallium lead chloride, was found in a high-temperature fumarole (~400°C) at the rim of La Fossa crater, Vulcano Island, Aeolian archipelago, Sicily, Italy. The mineral occurs as aggregates of pale yellow-green crystals tabular on {010} up to 0.1 mm in length on fragments of altered pyroclastic breccia, in association with bismuthinite (Bi 2 S 3 ), cotunnite (PbCl 2 ), challacolloite (KPb 2 Cl 5 ) and pseudocotunnite (K 2 PbCl 4 ). The mineral is monoclinic, space group P 2 1 / c . Cell parameters refined from powder-diffraction data are: a 8.9477(6), b 7.9218(7), c 12.4955(5) A, β 90.092(4)°, V 885.70(7) A 3 , with Z = 4. The strongest six reflections in the X-ray powder-diffraction data [ d (in A)( I )( hkl )] are: 3.696(100)(013), 3.971(83)(020), 2.109(45)(402,215), 2.569(42)(204), 1.848(41)(142,026), and 2.851(38)(213). Crystals of hephaistosite show the forms {010}, {101}, {110}, {100}, {001}, and {011}. Chemical analyses obtained by EDS microprobe gave, on average, in wt.%, Tl 23.78, K 0.01, Pb 51.78, Cl 21.40, Br 1.34, F 0.17, for a total of 98.48, corresponding to an empirical formula (based on 8 apfu ) of Tl 0.94 Pb 2.01 (Cl 4.85 Br 0.14 F 0.07 ) ∑5.06 . Hephaistosite is isostructural with challacolloite; intermediate members of the series between the two species occur in the same fumarole. The calculated density for the synthetic compound (TlPb 2 Cl 5 ) is 5.932 g/cm 3 . The mean index of refraction n , obtained from a natural sample using Brewster angle measurement, is 2.0(1). The structure was refined using two different crystals, with Tl:K atom ratios of 86:14 and 64:36; the final R index is 0.028 and 0.038, respectively. The mineral, approved by the IMA Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (No. 2006–043), is named in honor of the ancient Greek god of fire, Hephaistos (Hephaestus, Hϕαιστος), whose workshops were alleged to be located at Vulcano.

Un-forgetting Asclepius: An Erotics of Illness

Theorist Georges Bataille asserts that while sex is common to all animals, only humankind turns sexual activity into erotic activity. Professional medicine today is situated in a space remote from erotic experience. Especially because doctors openly deny that eros and desire hold any relevance to illness, a denial echoed by patients who learn to repeat what doctors believe, it is important to explore a contradictory argument (with its strong supporting evidence) holding that illness and medicine operate within an intrinsically erotic dimension. In this argument, Hippocrates stands as the founder and representative of rational medicine—call it medical logos. The great antagonist of Hippocrates, in a typological division useful in clarifying specific historical moments, is the ancient Greek god, Asclepius. Asclepius and Hippocrates reflect a continuing split within medicine between eros and logos. It is a split some patients and doctors today are openly beginning to question. Especially with reference to the work of four writers—Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Anatole Broyard, and Rafael Campo—this study begins an exploration of interrelations in the modern and postmodern era among eros, illness, and medicine.

Essay: How Pan got his tail: the fusion of medicine, art, and myth.

The ancient Greek god Pan is depicted with a tail emanating from his lumbar spinal area. Ancient Greek artists are quite accurate in their depiction of animal tails yet consistently show Pan as having an ectopic tail. We propose that the Pan tail is based on an ancient observation of an abnormality associated with diastematomyelia, which can explain both the seemingly anomalous tail and the physical and behavioral phenotype of the god. We believe that the origins of the myths about Pan are to be found in essentially medical observations the ancient Greeks made of actual people and not in metaphorical constructs they built on a foundation of pure imagination. Pan, the ancient Greek god of flocks and fields, inhabited not Mount Olympus but pastures, woodlands, and wild mountain places. Known for his fondness for dancing and playing the pan pipes, he was also famous for being able to cause panic—a condition named after him. Although Pan was considered to be wanton and lecherous, he was often unhappy in love. His appearance is variously described, but common to all descriptions is the observation that he is part goat and part human. He is always depicted as having a goat’s horns and tail and, almost always, goat’s legs. Pan appeared as a figure of worship in Arcadia, in ancient Greece, before 500 bc.1,2⇓ He was the most prominent member of a small group of gods and demigods, many of whom shared a distinctive set of features. This group (sometimes referred to as the “young” gods) included satyrs and silens2 (figure 1). Satyrs were considered to be more licentious than Pan but looked more or less like him. Later, the Romans included fauns, similar in appearance to satyrs, in their mythology. Silens were part horse and part human. …

Killing Time

AbstractThe ancient Greek god who symbolized time was Chronos, spelled with the letter chi, or "ch." Greek mythology also tells of another god named Kronos, spelled with a kappa, or "k." The similarity in the sound of gods' names paralleled a similarity in their natures: both were primordial deities, and both were all-devouring. Kronos, in particular, was said to have castrated his father to gain power and to have swallowed his children to retain it. Due to the electronic speed-up of contemporary life, Time (Chronos) is increasingly coming to resemble Kronos in its actions and effects. By distancing us from the past, it is emasculating our sense of history.By accelerating our behavior, it is swallowing our very humanity.

Grape growing in greece

The culture of the grape anid its accompanying art of wine making are of great antiquity in Greece. According to De Candolle (3), use of the grape doubtless began in prehistoric times. The poet Homer mentioned grapes and wine, and the art was probably known much earlier. The ancient Greek god, Dionysus, was patron of the crop. The Romans probably gained their knowledge of grape growinig and wine making fronm the Greeks, and for a long time they much preferred Grecian wines. It was the Greeks who founded French viticulture, near Marseille. Greece has long been famous for its production of the currants of commerce, from the 'Black Corinth' (or 'Zante currant'). According to Eisen (9), Pliny mentioned currants in the year 75 A.D. In herbals of the eleventl century and in literature of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, currants are referred to as "reysynis de corauntz," "corauntz, " "corent," "corawnce," "raysns of coreni," and currans." Raisins probably reached England as early as the thirteenth century (2). The species grown by the ancient Greeks, Vitis vinifera L., is still the one used in modern viticulture. This species is referred to as the Old World or European grape. Greece, including its islands, totals about 51,161 square miles (32,743,040 acres). Cultivated acreage is listed as 8,905,585 acres, about 27.2 per cent of the 'total. About 6.3 per cent of the total