Medical Latin in the Roman empire

viewpoint by the late Mirko Grmek. As he points out, Epidemics 5 and 7 are remarkable examples of ancient casereporting, often giving sufficient detail to allow a precise modem diagnosis. In this respect they are in no way inferior to the more famous Epidemics 1 and 3, and show the Greek physician at the bedside in an extremely favourable light. Indeed, on at least one occasion a modem clinical finding about a disease allows an emendation of the text that might otherwise have escaped improvement. Both in the commentary and in the introduction, Grmek offers suggestions from his wide experience as to the particular condition under discussion, arguing, rightly, that medical documents like these need to be interpreted medically as well as philologically. Even if one does not agree with all his suggestions, they add considerably to our understanding of diseases in the ancient world. These books also contain fragments of a wider attempt to understand the place of disease within the community. "Epidemic", suggests Jouanna, in the title means a general disease residing within a community, which can be identified by bringing together individual cases into a broader "constitution". This examines general climatic conditions and changes within the locality over a year which have an effect on the population, which in turn produces harmful changes within the individual's humours. The shared section of cases talks of "sufferers from melancholy", a rare term in the Hippocratic Corpus but here showing the gradual acceptance of this fourth humour. These general "constitutions" are built upon a variety of cases from a number of practitioners. These books show debate going on within a group of physicians, and also with others who are travelling around Greece, just like the authors of the cases themselves. These doctors are not afraid to comment on their own mistakes, to indicate how in future they might do better; and to describe their own uncertainties when face to face with an ill patient. They form a contribution towards prognosis, although the favoured word here is rather "prorrhesis", which incorporates also the announcement of the forecast. Anglophone readers will have to rely on Smith's Loeb for their understanding of these two books, and, for the most part, they will not be misled. (Jouanna's criticisms are far more concerned with the deficiencies of the Loeb format than with those of Smith's own scholarship.) But those with French will be wise to turn to the Bude, for the abundance of information and judicious guidance that it contains.