Jesus Never Existed – The
Christianizing of the Roman Empire
Dressed corpse (Capuchin vaults, Palermo).
Medieval obsession with
death included the display of clothed corpses.
In stark contrast, the ancient
Greeks celebrated the healthy, perfected human form.
Greek Warrior, found
nr. Riace, Italy, 5th century BC
By observing basic rules
of sanitation and hygiene, and with
doctors attached to the legions, military hospitals, and even field
a Roman soldier was more likely to survive conflict than any other
Biblical Guidelines –
no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine
– St Paul (1
Prayer and Oil!
"Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church;
and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name
of the Lord:
And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him
Rome's 'main drain'. Originally
built in the 6th century BC, it was extensively rebuilt in the 1st
The sewer is still
in service more than 2000 years later.
In contrast, in Christian
Europe, as late as the 17th century, open sewers – water ditches,
running alongside city walls – were the
only drainage almost everywhere.
One tactic of siege warfare
was to cut the water supply to a walled city.
Where the mighty aqueducts
were broken the still flowing water
formed extensive bogs.
Rapidly these new swamps became a breeding ground
for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Medical science – before and after the triumph of the Church
"God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty."
– 1 Corinthians 1:22,27.
St Paul talked the talk. Humanity had to walk the walk.
- 3rd centuries AD yet almost
indistinguishable from their 21st century counterparts.
cure for illness - cauterising!
The idea was that
the blister caused by a hot iron would draw out
a bad 'humour'.
suction couching needle for removal of cataracts
(shown next to a modern electric suction needle)!
an extremely fine inner tube a Roman surgeon could
suck the cataract out of his patient's eye.
The patient keeps his drawers on!
illustration of Yarrow
from De Materia Medica by Dioscurides -
6th century copy of 1st century AD herbal guide. It was prepared for
Julia Anicia, daughter of emperor Olybrius (472).
The guide detailed 500 herbs and their usage.
Astrology and numerology passes for medical
Any lingering ancient wisdom relating to the medicinal value of plants was persecuted as witchcraft.
plant Mullein (Johnson Papyrus)
from 4th century AD herbal guide
world had an extensive knowledge of herbalism.
glass bowls used to draw the blood
Roman false teeth,
set in gold. 3rd
diet of wealthy Romans ruined their teeth.
for centuries. Leeches often used.
Roman public flushed toilets, Ephesus, 1st
315 AD Rome had 144 public toilets which were
flushed clean by running water.
Emptying the potty in Christian Europe
of frequent rains, the streets of the city of Nürnberg
are full of garbage and other wastes flushed by the rain
water, so that the rider has always to worry that the
horse will fall in a deep layer of the dirt and will
look and smell like a dirty swine or that his clothes
will be stained by the mud splashed by other horsemen.”
M. Strell (Die
Roman Military Hospitals
clothing for dealing with plague victims – no
The beak was filled with sweet-smelling
Roman military hospital. 60 rooms, 300 patients
reign of Marcus Aurelius the first true hospitals were
built to serve the needs of the Roman army.
They had separate
wards, operating theatre, kitchens, baths, latrines, dispensary,
mortuary and even a herb garden.
Relief showing Roman birthing stool.
– with all due decorum!
Bath houses were a feature of all Romano-Greek cities.
Here, an illustration of Hadrian's Baths, Leptis Magna (North Africa).
of wood – a medieval 'cure' for V.D.
AD. Traction tables used to put tension on a displaced
bone or joint, such as a dislocated hip, to realign the
"Theriac" – dried
and powdered snake.
Useless 'cure-all' for centuries
century AD - aqueducts bring fresh water hundreds
of miles. Public baths and a culture of daily
bathing kept many diseases in check.
to popular understanding, for most of their length
Roman aqueducts ran underground, in sealed earthenware
pipes similar to modern water mains.
century – water carriers hawk buckets in teeming
The water source – a stand pipe,
drawing water from sources polluted with human waste – worked
delightfully well in spreading cholera and typhoid.
in the Ancient World
the 2nd century AD medical knowledge and surgical
skill reached a level never achieved again until
the early 20th century.
In the centuries in between
a malevolent religion – Christianity – presided
over the destruction and misery of humanity.
dominated the lives of the Greeks but Greek physicians
nonetheless tried to find a natural explanation for
illness. Medicine, as opposed to hocus-pocus,
was practiced at least as early as 1000 years BC.
Cos (460-377 BC), is credited with being the first
to separate medicine from rekigion and disease from the supernatural. He is best remembered for his Oath
of Medical ethics, still honoured, in modified form,
gods had a role to play, of course. Apollo was
consulted, as was Asclepios and
his two daughter goddesses Panacea and Hygieia.
Science and superstition coalesced at temple/hospitals – asclepeia – built
at places such as Epidaurus, Corinth, Cos and Pergamon.
They offered an 'holistic' approach to sickness:
hot baths, sleep and meditation coupled with prayer
and medical treatments. Written accounts have survived
of those who were cured.
the 3rd century BC Alexandria emerged
as the most important centre of medical research.
Its schools of study enjoyed international reknown
and attracted the finest minds. Alexandrian scholars
were able to take advantage of officially approved
dissection and Egyptian burial practice (which removed
and preserved the internal organs). The zoological
gardens provided animal specimens.
of Alexandria's earliest physicians, Herophilus (335-280 BC), collected and compiled a group of medical
treatises known collectively as the Hippocratic
Corpus, to which he added studies of his own.
He identified the brain as the centre
of intelligence, linked to the nervous system,
and the function of the heart in
the circulation of blood.
successor Eristratos concentrated
on the digestive system and postulated
that nutrition as well as nerves
and brain influenced mental diseases. Eristratos
was the first to distinguish between sensory and
centuries of research into human physiology and illness
reached its zenith in the second century AD, withGalen
of Pergamon (129-216), who contributed
a lifetime of his own investigations. His treatments
involved wine-based anticeptics, the stitching of
wounds and sterilised hand-crafted surgical instruments
made from 'fine iron.'
Raised to the status of personal
physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Galen wrote
hundreds of books on anatomy and the art of medicine,
which formed the corpus of medical knowledge of the
Sources: Peter Murrey Jones, Medieval Medicine (The British Library,
1998) I. Loudon (Ed.), Western Medicine (Oxford, 1997) David Keys, Catastrophe (Century, 1999)
John Julius Norwich, Byzantium (Viking, 1988)
Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind (Heinemann, 2002)
Jenifer Cochrane, The Illustrated History of Medicine (Tiger Books,
Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague (Pocket Books, 2001)
organisation, authority and membership preceded
rather than followed the justifying doctrine. As
the organisation and its needs changed so has the ‘Testament
of God’ adapted accordingly. Dogma – The
Word in all its Savage Glory