Greek Medical Research Articles

Greek Medical Science and its Understanding of Physis, as Conceptualized in the Hippocratic Treatise De Natura Hominis

Greek Medical Science and its Understanding of Physis, as Conceptualized in the Hippocratic Treatise De Natura Hominis

Athens-Pittsburgh Symposium in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

The four papers (Biener, Dupre, Kosman, and Psillos) published in this issue are a subset of those originally presented at the fourth meeting of the biennial Athens-Pittsburgh Symposium in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, a joint undertaking of the University of Athens, the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science, and European Cultural Center of Delphi. The topic of the symposium, convened at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, was Forms of Proof and Demonstration in Philosophy and Science. These symposia are held every two years in Greece in recognition of Athens as the birthplace of Western philosophy (all of them supported by the University of Athens, the National Technical University of Athens, and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science). The arst Athens-Pittsburgh Symposium, devoted to the Problem of Anthropomorphism in Science and Philosophy, also took place at the European Cultural Center of Delphi in 1996. The second focused on Greek Medical Traditions from Hippocrates to Harvey, and was held at the University of Athens in 1998. The third, a conference on Experience and Knowledge, met at Rethymnon on the island of Crete in 2000. For the arst three of these symposia, the Latsis Foundation has provided major funding, supplemented by funding from the Harvey and Leslie Wagner Endowment. The European Cultural Center of Delphi was major contributor to the fourth Symposium. The Athens-Pittsburgh Planning Committee consisted of Dionysios Anapolitanos (Athens), Michael Frede (Oxford), John Cooper (Princeton), James Lennox (Pittsburgh), Gerald Massey (Pittsburgh), John McDowell (Pittbsurgh), plus the two symposia co-chairs Baltas and Machamer.

Smoking related to anxiety and depression in Greek medical staff.

We assessed the relation of anxiety and depression to smoking behavior in a sample of 80 physicians and surgeons, using the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. 27 doctors were nonsmokers, 14 were former smokers, and 39 were current smokers. Current smokers showed significantly higher Anxiety and Depression scores compared to nonsmokers and former smokers, while the latter presented significantly lower Anxiety scores than nonsmokers. In current smokers, the daily quota of cigarettes was not correlated with Anxiety or Depression scores. From our results we can hypothesize that, among medical staff, smoking behavior is more anxiety-related than depression-related. In conclusion, we believe that interventions such as stress management techniques could be effective in lessening Anxiety and diminishing the need for relief searched for in smoking.

Sociodemographic and Psychological Characteristics Associated with Smoking among Greek Medical Students

This study aims to investigate associations between sociodemographic and psychological characteristics and smoking among Greek medical students. The students studied were separated into four groups: non-smokers and occasional, regular and heavy smokers. The students completed a battery of inventories and checklists. Immigrant students, users of other psychoactive substances, students more prone to minor delinquency and students with high scores on activity level, approach to new situations, sociability and novelty seeking showed higher smoking rates. A better understanding of these differences could be useful for the planning of antismoking policy.

The Corpus of Greek Medical Manuscripts:

The Corpus of Greek Medical Manuscripts is a new research programme which intends to supersede the old repertory of Herman Diels. Its purpose is to inventory anew the medical manuscripts, to describe them fully from the originals, to treat the detailed information by help of the computer, and to establish a microlilm collection of the manuscripts. It will constitute a first-hand materials for a history of medicine based on the factual data contained in the manuscripts.

John of Alexandria Again: Greek Medical Philosophy in Latin Translation

It is a brave scholar who ventures into the murky world of Late Antique medicine in search of information on earlier theories. Not only may the opinions of a Herophilus or a Galen be distorted by their distant interpreters, but frequently the texts themselves present serious challenges to understanding. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Latin versions made from Greek philosophical and medical commentaries, which interpose an additional linguistic barrier before one can make sense of sometimes complex arguments. Yet as R. J. Hankinson has shown in his recent note on John of Alexandria, there is much to be gained from these forbidding works. But while he has succeeded in elucidating much of the technical terminology and argument that lies behind one of these translations, his lack of familiarity with the textual basis of the relevant commentary has both led him into error and prevented him from resolving still more of its difficulties. His ignorance is easily pardonable, for, as will be shown, modern editors have unwittingly conspired to block the way to the truth, and the essential secondary literature has been published in journals and theses rarely accessible to the classicist.

Medical laser in Greece

Although Laser technology has been around in Greece for quite some time, the medical and surgical application of Lasers has only recently started. However, the future seems to be promising due to the existence of advanced Laser Institutes, especially in Crete, the recent creation of the “Greek Medical Laser Society”, the increasing number of well trained physician, in the field of Laser and the expected close cooperation of all of the above.

The empirical element in the methods of early Greek medical writers and Herodotus: a shared epistemological response.

Today one expects a truth or the truth to be characterized by objectivity, communicability, and unity. It should be testable, precisely expressed, consistent, and logical. To be all this, the truth must conform to the world of observation, and it must be based on data that can verify or falsify it. A truth may be general or particular, and research in different disciplines, of course, will pursue information and truths by different methods.Some thinkers express dissatisfaction with the narrowness of this concept of truth, which is largely based on the specific needs of the inductive model of the natural sciences. It makes us uncomfortable, however, to say that the poet has one kind of truth, the philosopher another, the doctor, the physicist, and the geographer still others, and the historian another, yet autonomous truth. History is among the fields of study most subject to misapprehension, for it lies between human sciences and human arts, also between cases and laws.

"Acromion" in ancient Greek medical writers.

"Acromion" in ancient Greek medical writers.

Greek Medical Etiquette

Greek Medical Etiquette

The Harvard Graduate School of Medicine — The Dairy Lunch — Greek Medical Inscriptions — Opening of the Huntington Hospital — The Question of Headgear — A Prolific British Matron — Medical Notes

The Harvard Graduate School of Medicine — The Dairy Lunch — Greek Medical Inscriptions — Opening of the Huntington Hospital — The Question of Headgear — A Prolific British Matron — Medical Notes

Notice of a Greek Medical Inscription found at Chester

The author comments on the recent discovery of a rare Greek inscription in the British Isles. He suggests that the tablet may have been part of an altar to Aesculapius and Hygenia raised by a Greek physician working for the Emperor Hadrian in the second century.

On some ancient Greek Medical Vases for containing Lykion; &c., and on the modern use of the same drug in India

Professor James Young Simpson, with apologies for an article about Greek antiquities rather than Scottish ones, wrote an article to bring attention to several examples of Greek medical vases with inscriptions referring to lycium, a medicine that he found mention of in Galen and Dioscorides, among others. The professor wished to remark on the bottles because there was so little material evidence of Ancient Greek medical practices, in comparison especially with Ancient Roman medicine.
 
 The meeting minutes for March 8, 1852 are appended on, mainly a list of donations mades to the Society.