Airs Waters And Places

Like the ancient medical text by Hippocrates that gives this book its title, Airs, Waters, Places looks with intensity and purpose at the elemental world to understand the possibility of an expanded notion of health in an often disconnected and disconnecting social order. In the poet's words, To call language a nervous system might be useful: if each sentient being is analogous to cells within the organism, language is analogous to the nerves as well as the messages sent along those nerves. There is, there, if not eternity, at least delusion. This is a book of various appetites in constant motion.

The aim of this book is to make Hippocrates' On Airs, Waters and Places and the Hippocratic Oath accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. Hippocrates' On Airs, Waters and Places is a great text for intermediate readers. The simple sentence structure makes it easy to read, while its subject matter, the impact of climate on disease and character, is interesting for a number of reasons. The presentation falls roughly into two halves, the first detailing various environmental factors that contribute to specific diseases, the second more ethnographic in its account of the differences between Asians and Europeans as a function of their environment and customs.

This volume makes available in English translation a selection of Jacques Jouanna's papers on Greek and Roman medicine, ranging from the early beginnings of Greek medicine to late antiquity.

This work is a sampling of the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of ancient Greek medical works. At the beginning, and interspersed throughout, there are discussions on the philosophy of being a physician. There is a large section about how to treat limb fractures, and the section called The Nature of Man describes the physiological theories of the time. The book ends with a discussion of embryology and a brief anatomical description of the heart.

In this valuable treatise, Hippocrates suggested to the traveling physicians to look into the seasons of the year and their effects. He presented the health implications of the winds, the qualities of the waters, and each city's unique setting in the landscape. Hippocrates stated that "our natures are the physicians of our diseases" and supported that this movement for a natural cure should be encouraged.

In this valuable treatise, Hippocrates suggested to the traveling physicians to look into the seasons of the year and their effects. He presented the health implications of the winds, the qualities of the waters, and each city's unique setting in the landscape.

This volume aims at exploring the ancient roots of ‘holistic’ approaches in the specific field of medicine and the life sciences, without, however, overlooking the larger theoretical implications of these discussions. Therefore, the project plans to broaden the perspective to include larger cultural discussions and, in a comparative spirit, reach out to some examples from non Graeco-Roman medical cultures. As such, it constitutes a fundamental contribution to history of medicine, philosophy of medicine, cultural studies, and ancient studies more broadly. The wide-ranging selection of chapters offers a comprehensive view of an exciting new field: the interrogation of ancient sources in the light of modern concepts in philosophy of medicine, as justification of the claim for their enduring relevance as object of study and, at the same time, as means to a more adequate contextualisation of modern debates within a long historical process. Contributors are: Hynek Bartoš, Sean Coughlin, Elizabeth Craik, Brooke Holmes, Helen King, Giouli Korobili, David Leith, Vivian Nutton, Julius Rocca, William Michael Short, P. N. Singer, Konstantinos Stefou, Chiara Thumiger, Laurence Totelin, Claire Trenery, John Wee, Francis Zimmermann.

"The Hippocratic Collection (Corpus Hippocraticum) consists of between sixty and seventy medical writings in the Ionic Greek dialect dating for the most part from a hundred year period around 400 BC. The works included in volume 1 are Ancient Medicine, Airs Waters Places, Epidemics I, Epidemics III, Oath, Precepts, and Nutriment. These works greatly in their form and content. Ancient Medicine and Airs Waters Places are essays formulated in elegant expository prose, in which their authors treat central questions of medical method. Epidemics I and III are primary witnesses to Hippocratic observation and experience. The Hippocratic Oath is, or pretends to be, a historical document, although its lack of historical context often leaves its interpreter at a loss. Unquestionably, however, its identification of many of the perennial ethical problems attached to medical practice, and its high moral ideal justify the reverence it has received for two millennia. Precepts is interesting for its author's thoughts on medical ethics, etiquette, and professionalism, in spite of the fact that the text often lacks logical coherence, and its language on several occasions defies comprehension. Nutriment, which is also often difficult to understand-although in this case the mystery may be partly the result of an intentional imitation of the language of the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus-contains many speculative explanations how the three basic forms of nutriment (food, drink, and breath) interact with the body"--