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Medicine and Markets in the Graeco-Roman World and Beyond: Essays on ancient medicine In honour of Vivian Nutton.
Edited by Laurence Totelin and Rebecca Flemming

ISBN 978-1-910589-78-6, 250pp, 2020, .50
 
For almost half a century, Vivian Nutton has been a leading figure in the study of ancient (and less ancient) medicine. The field itself has been revolutionised over that time. In this volume distinguished colleagues and former students develop, in his honour, key themes of his ground-breaking scholarship.

Spanning from the Bronze Age to the Digital Age, involving the cult of Artemis and the corpuscular theories of Asclepiades of Bithynia, the medicinal uses of beavers and the cost of health-care and wet-nursing, case-histories, remedy exchange and the medical repercussions of political assassination, this book has at its centre the pluralism and diversity of the ancient medical marketplace. The lively interplay between choice and competition, unity and division, communication and debate, so notable in Vivian Nutton’s foundational vision of the world of classical medicine, is richly examined across these pages.
 

The Editors

Laurence Totelin is Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University. She specialises in the history of Greek and Roman pharmacology, botany and gynaecology. Her works include Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Brill, 2009) and, with botanist Gavin Hardy, Ancient Botany (Routledge, 2016). She is currently working on the trade in medicines in the first centuries of the Roman Empire, on which she is preparing a volume Retailing Therapy (Routledge).

Rebecca Flemming is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the Classics Faculty of the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College. A specialist in the society and culture of the Roman Empire, she has published widely on classical medicine, gender and sexuality, both together and separately. Her monograph Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature and Authority from Celsus to Galen came out from Oxford University Press in 2000; the volume she co-edited with Nick Hopwood and Lauren Kassell, Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.
 

The Contributors

Robert Arnott, Véronique Boudon-Millot, Elizabeth Craik, Rebecca Flemming, Antonio Ricciardetto & Danielle Gourevitch, Ann Ellis Hanson, Helen King, David Leith. G.E.R. Lloyd, John Scarborough. Laurence M.V. Totelin
 

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of contributors

Abbreviations and sigla

Introduction: Vivian Nutton and the rise of ancient medicine - Rebecca Flemming

PART I: PRICES AND EXCHANGE

1. The cost of health: rich and poor in imperial Rome - Véronique Boudon-Millot

2. Healing correspondence: letters and remedy exchange in the Graeco-Roman world - Laurence M. V. Totelin

3. Dioscorides on beavers - John Scarborough

4. The cost of a baby: how much did it cost to hire a wet-nurse in Roman Egypt? - Antonio Ricciardetto and Danielle Gourevitch

PART II: PLURALISM AND DIVERSITY

5. A return to cases and the pluralism of ancient medical traditions - G.E.R. Lloyd

6. Malaria, childbirth and the cult of Artemis - Elizabeth Craik

7. Medicine, markets and movement in the Bronze Age Mediterranean: a Mycenaean healing deity at Hattuša-Bog?azköy - Robert Arnott

8. Antistius Medicus and the ides of March - Ann Ellis Hanson

9. Notes on three Asclepiadean doctors - David Leith

10. Hippocratic whispers: telling the story of the life of Hippocrates on the internet - Helen King

Bibliography

Bibliography of Vivian Nutton’s works

Index
 

BMCR 2022.06.02.

"It is certainly a new valuable acquisition in the field of the history of ancient medicine, showing that it was not only a matter of scientific theories and of practical techniques, but also a living part of the society, its economy, and its culture." Nicola Reggiani,

Classics for All 2020.

"This is an extremely diverse collection. The unifying factor is that the authors are, in the majority of cases, responding to specific articles written by Nutton (see for example Totelin’s use of his 1985 article ‘The Drug Trade in Antiquity’), or subjects championed by him (see for example Boudon-Millot’s use of Galen as a starting point from which to consider the ancient Roman physician). As a result, historians of medicine will find most, if not all, of the chapters diverting and thought-provoking. It is to be hoped that the volume will find a broader readership than that, as several of the chapters offer interesting perspectives on other areas of ancient history such as politics (Hanson) and slavery (Ricciardetto and Gourevitch), and even classical reception (King)." Jane Draycott