Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece: Between Craft and Cult - Hardcover

Wickkiser, Bronwen L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801889782 ISBN 13: 9780801889783

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Delving deeply into ancient medical history, Bronwen L. Wickkiser explores the early development and later spread of the cult of Asklepios, one of the most popular healing gods in the ancient Mediterranean. Though Asklepios had been known as a healer since the time of Homer, evidence suggests that large numbers of people began to flock to the cult during the fifth century BCE, just as practitioners of Hippocratic medicine were gaining dominance.

Drawing on close readings of period medical texts, literary sources, archaeological evidence, and earlier studies, Wickkiser finds two primary causes for the cult’s ascendance: it filled a gap in the market created by the refusal of Hippocratic physicians to treat difficult chronic ailments and it abetted Athenian political needs. Wickkiser supports these challenging theories with side-by-side examinations of the medical practices at Asklepios' sanctuaries and those espoused in Hippocratic medical treatises. She also explores how Athens' aspirations to empire influenced its decision to open the city to the healer-god's cult.

In focusing on the fifth century and by considering the medical, political, and religious dimensions of the cult of Asklepios, Wickkiser presents a complex, nuanced picture of Asklepios' rise in popularity, Athenian society, and ancient Mediterranean culture. The intriguing and sometimes surprising information she presents will be valued by historians of medicine and classicists alike.

About this title

About the Author

Bronwen L. Wickkiser is an assistant professor of classics at Vanderbilt University.

Review

"Wickkiser covers a huge amount of ground and provides the best synthesis of the current literature on the cult of Asklepios that has been produced."

(Helen King, University of Reading)

"Wickkiser, by focusing on a single historical event of some significance, has inserted an intriguing new angle to an old debate... In this respect, the present study provides the basis for further research into the significant questions which it raises."

(Konstantinos Kapparis, Ph.D. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences)

"Elegantly written, and with a sound command of the original Greek, it provides an excellent introduction to the rise of Asclepius' cult in Athens. It also promotes a clear and challenging thesis."

(Vivian Nutton Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science)

"This book will be very useful to students and scholars (especially chapters four and five) of medical history, as it is a very clear introduction to the subject and somewhat renews our perspective on the origins of the cult of Asclepios in Athens."

(Caroline Petit Social History of Medicine)

"Wickkiser freshly appraises our best evidence for the importation of the cult―namely, the Telemachus monument―in order to embed the event in both the space of the city and the local dynamics of power."

(Brooke Holmes Bulletin of the History of Medicine)

"I have enjoyed reading this work enormously, and would recommend it to anyone seeking a short introduction to Asklepios, or to anyone teaching a course on ancient medicine or ancient 'religion'."

(Laurence Totelin Medical History)

"A fresh and original contribution to the scholarship on Asklepios."

(Jennifer Larson Religious Studies Review)

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0801889782
• ISBN 13: 9780801889783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192