HISTORY OF ANCIENT MEDICINE

The expected learning results, declined according to the Dublin Descriptors, are the following:

1. Knowledge and understanding (DD1)

The course aims to provide the student with knowledge and useful tools for understanding and interpreting the history of ancient medicine through the indispensable aid of multiple testimonies (literary texts, papyri, inscriptions, archaeological remains, iconographic finds) coming from area of ​​the Mediterranean and distributed over a wide time span between the Archaic age and Late Antiquity (pre-Hippocratic, Hippocratic, Hellenistic, imperial medicine). Within these chronological coordinates Western medical thought unfolds from an initial phase of a magical-superstitious nature to a terminal of a markedly scientific-philosophical type: giving ample space to the direct use of the sources achieves multiple educational objectives, as it contributes to the development of the student’s ability to know theories and models in a historical and geographical context to interpret educational and training events, to know the relationship systems between synchrony and diachrony, to grasp the space-time and cause-effect links, to establish interdisciplinary connections through the methodology of historical research, to evaluate long-lasting events and processes in the health-historical context.

2. Applying knowledge and understanding (DD2)

Through the study of the discipline applied to the different socio-economic, political and cultural contexts the student will acquire the skills to connect the theoretical and methodological contents learned with the interpretation of past, present and future events and processes, to use methodologies appropriate to the educational objectives and above all to identify in the health sector spaces and techniques of intervention by specialists both in relation to the progress of medical knowledge over the centuries, and in relation to the relationship with the patient, whose figure experienced an increased interest with the advent of Christianity, and even in relation to the protection and medical-health assistance provided to specific types of patients, such as minors, but also the elderly and the disabled.

3. Making judgements (DD3)

The acquisition of the disciplinary contents will develop in the student the awareness and maturity necessary to express, with full autonomy of judgment, points of view and opinions through the ability to re-elaborate, deepen and critically rethink the contents learned, to grasp the link between objectives and results of research, translate the analysis of learning contexts into the formulation of objectives and proposals for change and/or transformation, sift and classify increasingly complex data and above all put the main nosological, diagnostic and therapeutic theories – elaborated by ancient medical thought – in an appropriate relationship both with individual pathologies and with epidemic diseases and even with the promotion of well-being and health from early childhood to adulthood up to old age.

4. Communication (DD4)

The careful analysis of the disciplinary contents will offer the student the necessary instrumentation to correctly communicate the meaning of their ideas and actions, confront on a dialogical level with different interlocutors (specialists or not), motivate, in oral and written form, objectives, procedures and methodologies, to enhance the different points of view and above all to appropriately use the technical vocabulary of the discipline, adequately using the expressive means typical of sectoral languages.

5. Lifelong learning skills (DD5)

The course aims to provide students with the necessary tools not only to increase their knowledge in relation to the increased awareness of their training needs, but also to refine their skills in the study of increasingly complex topics and above all to broaden and perfect their ability to learn and use innovative methodologies to cope with new problems.

Frontal lessons.

Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the Syllabus.

General knowledge of ancient history (especially Imperial and Late Antique), of the basic coordinates of history (time and space) and the meaning of 'document'. Use of the historical atlas.

Attendance is not required, but definitely recommended, both because the contents of the lectures will be punctually supported by the projection of slides and supplemented by the teacher's explanation, and because the comprehension of the aforementioned contents will be periodically checked in the classroom through appropriate formative feedback (reading, analysis and commentary on a historical document, drafting of conceptual maps).

• sources and research methods: treaties, inscriptions, medical prescriptions in the papyri, archaeological and paleopathological remains
• “Homeric”, folk and sacerdotal medicine
• scientific medicine and evolutionary stages: Hippocrates; the Hellenistic age and the medical “sects”; the Imperial period and the figure of Galen; the Late Antiquity
• health and illness, care and healing: environment and climate; pathologies and diagnosis; epidemics; hygiene and therapies (dietetic, pharmacological and surgical); tools, medicines and places of recovery
• medical specialties: obstetrics and gynecology; ophthalmology; dentistry; psychiatry
• the doctor-patient relationship: the professional ethics; legal liability and penalties; the awareness and cooperation of the patient; the triad physician-disease-patient in Christian mentality
• social and economic status of the doctor: slave, freed and free;  court, municipal and military physician; the woman and the practice of medicine

I. Andorlini-A. Marcone, Medicina, medico e società nel mondo antico, Firenze Le Monnier Università 2004, ISBN 88-00-86088-5, pp. 1-232.

V. Boudon-Millot, Galeno di Pergamo. Un medico greco a Roma, Roma Carocci Editore 2016, ISBN 978-88-430-8193-8, pp. 9-229.

G. Arena, La cura del potere e il potere della cura. Studi su Galeno, Roma Edizioni Quasar 2021, ISBN 978-88-5491-191-8, pp. 21-197.

A multiple-choice test will be administered on the Microsoft Teams platform only. The test will focus on the contents of the text by I. Andorlini-A. Marcone, Medicina, medico e società nel mondo antico, Firenze Le Monnier Università 2004, pp. 1-232. Further operative indications will be made known through a specific notice published in Studium.

Students must pass this test with a mark of at least 18/30 in order to then be able to take the oral test on the remaining part of the programme at the official exam.

Students who have not chosen to take this test or who, despite having taken it, have not obtained at least a sufficient mark, may of course take the oral examination on the whole programme at the official exam.

The evaluation of the test averages out in the formulation of the final grade.

Final examination: oral.

Should conditions require it, the learning assessment may also be conducted online.

The following assessment criteria will be adopted for the awarding of marks (both for the questionnaire administered on Microsoft Teams and for the final oral test):

- ability to independently rework and critically deepen the acquired contents

- ability to make appropriate use of expressive tools

- ability to use the technical vocabulary of the discipline appropriately

- ability to grasp space-time and cause-effect connections

- ability to establish interdisciplinary connections through the methodology of historical research

The questions will focus on the content presented in class by the teacher and analytically indicated above among the topics of the syllabus. These topics do not only represent the core and merely exemplify the various questions asked in the examination, but also constitute the necessary cue for verifying in each individual student the capacities for in-depth study and autonomous rethinking, the expressive and lexical skills, and the abilities in interdisciplinary connections.