Trachoma has been one of the most blinding diseases in the history of ophthalmology. From its initial description in antiquity until the late 1930s, no specific treatment or effective cure had been known, and the only expedient had been to destroy the diseased tissue containing the infectious agent, rendering the disease inactive. Virtually all medical, mechanical, and surgical treatments were ...

Recent excavations at Driffield Terrace in York (Northern England) revealed an extremely unusual Romano-British cemetery of probably all male composition, more than half of the individuals decapitated and with high incidence of other periand antemortem trauma. This paper presents the results of multi(carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium) isotopic analyses of bone and dentine collagen (n=68) a...

Religious persecution of “heretics” by the Catholic Church that characterizes the middle ages had its roots in power struggles centuries prior. In the first centuries of Christianity, Christians fought amongst themselves for interpretive and doctrinal authority. Heterodoxy didn’t stand a chance in the Middle Ages; in Late Antiquity nothing was certain. Everything changed when, in 380, Emperor T...

In an age when doping was almost a way of life it was only a short step from the poisoning of man to the poisoning of animals. In classical antiquity there are examples of both doping to win and doping to lose. Diomedes, the son of Aries and Cyrene, fed his horses on human flesh to make them savage and unbeatable, while Medea used an opiate to stupefy the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece. ...

A collection of more than 1800 carbonized papyri, discovered in the Roman 'Villa dei Papiri' at Herculaneum is the unique classical library survived from antiquity. These papyri were charred during 79 A.D. Vesuvius eruption, a circumstance which providentially preserved them until now. This magnificent collection contains an impressive amount of treatises by Greek philosophers and, especially, ...

Estimating global fluxes of precious metals is key to understanding early monetary systems. This work adds silver (Ag) to the metals (Pb and Cu) used so far to trace the provenance of coinage through variations in isotopic abundances. Silver, copper, and lead isotopes were measured in 91 coins from the East Mediterranean Antiquity and Roman world, medieval western Europe, 16th-18th century Spai...

he relationship between medicine and religion belongs to the classical topics of medical history, in the studies of the so called early civilizations, mainly Egypt and Babylonia, of Greek and Roman antiquity, of the occidental and oriental Middle Ages and of the European early modern period. Yet about a century ago, preformed by enlightenment ideas on linear progress of humankind and often expl...

This paper examines the influence of water on public health throughout history. Farming, settling down and building of villages and towns meant the start of the problems mankind suffers from this very day – how to get drinkable water for humans and cattle and how to manage the waste we produce. The availability of water in large quantities has been considered an essential part of a civilized wa...

In this paper I discuss the art-nature relationship in Greco-Roman antiquity with special reference to one important ancient art or technê: mechanics. Although different ancient authors express different views about the goals, methods, and scope of mechanics, they tend to agree in conceiving it as a technê, an art or science, involving a combination of various kinds of theoretical and practical...

one such example discussed in a separate chapter). The injury becomes stylized and subservient to this ideal. Part Three examines the archaeological record. It is unfortunately rather short, and the sections on arms and armour and surgical instruments were better placed in Part One. The conclusion is one and a half pages, and Salazar excuses this because of the book's "multi-disciplinary approa...