DISEASE IN ANCIENT GREECE: CANCER, PLAGUES, HYSTERIA

DISEASE IN ANCIENT GREECE

20120222-Funerary_helmet_Getty_Villa_92.AC.7.1.jpg
Funerary helmet
According to Greek mythology the world began with manking experiencing a sort of golden age without trouble or sorrows, and disease and other evil things were unleashed on the world when Pandora opened here box. The oldest literary monument of Greek life, the Homeric Epic, makes little mention of disease, with the exception of the great plague, which devastated the camp of the Greeks before Troy. The reason of this, however, lies in the nature of the poet’s subject, and we must not on that account infer that illness was little known. [Source “The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks” by Hugo Blümner, translated by Alice Zimmern, 1895]

Archaeologists can determine high fevers suffered during childhood on skeletons. Greeks believed a sneeze was sign of imminent danger and an indication of the expulsion of a person' vital force and every effort was made to keep them from sneezing. The word “cholera” is derived from “choler”, the Greek word for yellow bile. Hippocrates described cholera as a post-childhood disease that could be treated by eating goat meat (most likely he was talking about a milder form of diarrhea).

Tuberculosis has long been called the silent killer and has been known since the birth of history. It ravaged ancient Egypt and Greece. The ancient Greeks described it with the word “phthisis” , which means for a living body to “shrivel with intense heat as if placed in a flame.” Later the Romans ascribed the term “consumere” “to eat up or devour” to it.

The ancient Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks are all believed to have suffered from malaria. Epidemics of malaria swept through the ancient world when the water table was raised, creating swamps where mosquitos could breed. Greeks and Romans used mosquito netting. Some Egyptian mummies show signs of it. Symptoms of the disease were described by Aristotle, Homer, Socrates and Hippocrates and in Nei Ching, the Chinese canon of medicine, which dates back to 2700 B.C. The decline of some Greek city states and the fall of Rome have been attributed to malaria. Alexander the Great likely died of malaria. It may have stopped the armies of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.

Many scholars believe that syphilis was introduced to Europe from the New World after Columbus returned from America. There is evidence, however, that was already present in southern Italy in Greek times. One archaeologist showed National Geographic a skeleton full of little holes. "These lesion," the scientist said, "are indicative of the microorganism that causes syphilis — a spirochete called “ Trepenema” . We see a lot of it. Forty-seven skeletons out of 272 show signs of trepeonemal infection."

Cancer in Ancient Greece

Almost 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates described cancer as ‘karkinoma’ (Greek for crab) which is believed to describe how a tumour clung on like a crab with its claws. The term evolved into the word 'cancer' by way of to Roman writers. Hippocrates described using heat to treat tumours, writing: "Those diseases that medicine cannot cure are cured with the knife. Those that the knife cannot cure are cured by fire and those that fire does not cure are considered incurable. " Ancient Greek writers were aware of mastectomy as a treatment for breast cancer, and knew that cancer could spread to different parts of the body. [Source: Rob Waugh, Yahoo News UK, May 30, 2024]

CNN reported: “Ancient Greece first identified cancer as a specific illness, the analysis said. It appears that the Greeks had a better knowledge and awareness of cancer than their predecessors, which is a more likely explanation than an increase in cancer, said Rosalie David, professor at the University of Manchester in the UK, and Michael Zimmerman, professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania,

In Ancient Greece, cancer gets referenced in the Hippocratic Corpus-texts said to have been written by the "father of medicine" Hippocrates between 410 and 360 B.C. These texts say that an excess of black bile causes cancer. "Hippocrates used the carcinos (crab) and carcinoma to desribe a range of tumours and swellings," David and Zimmerman wrote. The Roman physician Galen of Pergamum said around 200 A.D. that this was because some cancers appeared crab-like. [Source: CNN, October 14th, 2010]

Ancient Greeks knew that a mastectomy would help a patient with a lump in her breast, but they also recognized that cancer can recur and spread to other parts of the body. “They recommended an unbelievable variety of potions, and plant extracts, and combinations to see if they couldn’t kill the cancer in other places," Olson said. "None of those worked."

How the Ancient World Dealt with Cancer


breast tumor votive offering

In 2010, David and Zimmerman published a study in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer that examined evidence of cancer and suggested that cancer has become a more common disease only recently, because of modern lifestyle. David and Zimmerman examined evidence of cancer in the fossil record of early humans, in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece. [Source: CNN, October 14th, 2010]

From about 500 to 1500 A.D. there was little advancement in understanding cancer, the analysis said. Then, in the 17th century, Wilhelm Fabricus described operations for breast and other cancers. Cancer rates appear to have increased since the Industrial Revolution, David said. In the past 200 years, reports of specific cancers such as scrotal cancer and Hodgkin's disease have emerged.

David and Zimmerman’s suggestion that cancer occurred less frequently in antiquity and it relative frequency today is due to lifestyle habits is controversial. “No one can conduct a survey of ancient populations. It can be argued that since life expectancy was lower in the ancient world, most people didn't live long enough to develop cancer...The risk of cancer rises with age, and people only started living longer more recently. Cancer is also highly genetic. But the lack of evidence of childhood bone cancer suggests that perhaps overall rates were lower, David said, To say that pollution has helped make cancer prevalent is highly controversial, said James Olson, historian at Sam Houston State University in Texas. But certainly smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise all contribute to cancer in the modern world, Olson said.

Epilepsy in Ancient Greece and an Unusual Face-Down Burial

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In his fifth century B.C. book on the subject, Hippocrates calls epilepsy a “sacred disease” but writes that the idea that epilepsy comes from gods is nothing other than ignorance. For Hippocrates “it comes from the same causes as the other diseases” which is to say “what enters and exits the body, from the cold, from the sun and ever-changing winds” (On the Sacred Disease 18). For Greek and Roman doctors, like Hippocrates and Galen, the falling sickness was caused by a variety of things including blockages in the brain, sleeping on one’s back, drunkenness, and spoiled milk. Hippocrates argued that the condition is hereditary. [Source:Candida Moss, Daily Beast, January 12, 2020]

These elite doctors, however, were fighting a losing battle. Most ancient Greeks and Romans still believed that epilepsy was the result of divine interference, particularly that related to the moon. As late as the seventh century A.D. philosophers continued to speculate that epilepsy was related to lunar cycles.Unlike Jews and early Christians, however, Greeks and Romans didn’t regularly discuss demonic possession. That, as Oswei Temkin has shown, was a particularly Jewish explanation for the condition and something that Jews may have picked up on from other ancient near eastern civilizations like the Assyrians. The first century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus, for example, discusses King Solomon’s medical talents by saying that “God granted him knowledge of the art used against demons for the benefit and healing of men. He also composed incantations by which illnesses are relieved, and left behind forms of exorcisms with which those possessed by demons drive them out, never to return” (Jewish War 8.45).

In April 2023, archaeologists reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports that an unusual face-down burial of a young woman with the hole from a nail in her skull — found at the Monte Luna necropolis in Sardinia and dated to late in the third century B.C. — may have been the result of ancient beliefs about epilepsy, and an effort to prevent to prevent epilepsy from spreading to others. At the time the woman died, "The idea was that the disease that killed the person in the grave could be a problem for the entire community," said study co-author Dario D'Orlando, an archaeologist and historian at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia. [Source Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, February 22, 2023]

According to Live Science: The unusual burial was found in a tomb in the Necropolis of Monte Luna, a hill located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Cagliari in the southern part of Sardinia. The burial ground was first used by Punic people after the sixth century B.C. and continued in use until the second century B.C. The study found evidence of blunt-force trauma to the woman's head, possibly from falling, and a square hole that appears to have been made by an ancient nail.

And a new analysis of the young woman's skeleton — based on her pelvis, teeth and other bones — confirmed an earlier estimate that she was between 18 and 22 years old when she died. It also showed she had suffered trauma to her skull shortly before or around the time she died. The archaeologists found evidence of two types of trauma: blunt-force trauma, which could have occurred during an accidental fall — possibly during an epileptic seizure — and a sharp-force injury in the form of a square hole in her skull consistent with an impact by an ancient Roman nail; such nails have been found at several archaeological sites in Sardinia.

D'Orlando said the sharp-force injury by a nail may have been inflicted after the woman's death to prevent the perceived "contagion" of her epilepsy. Such treatment may have been based on a Greek belief that certain diseases were caused by "miasma" — bad air — that would have been known throughout the Mediterranean at that time, D'Orlando said. The same remedy is described in the first century A.D. by the Roman general and natural historian Gaius Plinius Secundus — known as Pliny the Elder — who recommended nailing body parts after a death from epileptic seizures to prevent the spread of the condition, the authors reported. D'Orlando suggested that this practice of nailing the skull, and perhaps the woman's unusual facedown burial, could be explained by the introduction of new Roman ideas, which were heavily influenced by ancient Greek ideas, into rural Sardinia.

Plague in Athens in 430 B.C.

After the Peloponnese War began, in 430 B.C., Athens was devastated by a mysterious plague that ripped through the city-state's military, killed Pericles and affected the course of the Peloponnese war. No one is sure exactly what disease the plague of Athens was. Among the illnesses that have been suggested or proposed are dysentery, smallpox, measles, influenza, anthrax, and a host of other illnesses. Some believe it was the Ebola virus, or perhaps the bubonic plague. It had same symptoms of typhus fever but otherwise was not like any known disease. Most of the diseases don't pass the test for one reason or another.

The best account of the plague was written by Thucydides. He wrote: "The disease began, it is said, in Ethiopia beyond Egypt, and then...it suddenly fell upon the city of Athens...Athenians suffered...hardship owing to the crowding into the city of the people from the country districts...Bodies of dying men upon another, and half dead rolled about in the streets and , in their longing for water, near all the fountains. The temples too , in which they had quartered themselves, were full of corpses of those who died in them."


Plague in an Ancient City


Thucydides wrote: "Suddenly while in good health, men were seized first with intense heat of the head, and redness in the mouth, both the throat and the tongue, immediately became blood-red and exhaled an unnatural fetid breath. In the next stage , sneezing and hoarsnesss came on , an in a short time the disorder descended to the chest, attended by severe coughing. And when it settled in the stomach that was upset, and vomits of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, there also attended by great distress; and in most cases ineffectual retching followed by violent convulsions...Externally the body was very hot to the touch ; it was not pale but reddish, livid, and breaking out in small blisters and ulcers....Internally it was consumed by such heat that the patients could not bear to have on them the lightest covering...and would have liked to throw themselves into cold water...When the patients died, as most of them did on the seventh to ninth day from internal heat, they still had some strength left."

The plague began in Ethiopia and passed through Egypt and Libya to Greece in 430-426 B.C. It changed the balance of power between Athens and Sparta, ending the Golden Age of Pericles and Athenian dominance in the ancient world. An estimated one-third of Athenians died Knowledge of the epidemic had come largely from an account by the Greek historian Thucydides, who was taken ill with the plague but recovered. Despite Thucydides’ description, researchers could only narrow the possibilities down to a range that included the bubonic plague, smallpox, anthrax and measles. [Source: Live Science, January 23, 2006]

In 2006, scientists from the University of Athens announced that the Great Plague of Athens was actually an outbreak of typhoid. According to Live Science: “A new DNA analysis of teeth from an ancient Greek burial pit indicates typhoid fever caused the epidemic. The study, led by Manolis Papagrigorakis of the University of Athens, found DNA sequences similar to those of the modern day Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the organism that causes typhoid fever. The study was by the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. Typhoid fever is transmitted by contaminated food or water. It is most common today in developing countries.

Hysteria and Mental Illness in Ancient Greece

In the 4th century B.C., Hippocrates said that "madness" was caused by "moistness" in the brain

The word "hysteria" comes from Greek word for "uterus." The condition was regarded as a sort of "womb furie" that produced the symptoms such as confusion, laziness, depression, headaches, forgetfulness, stomach upsets, ticklishness, cramps, insomnia, weepiness, palpitations of the heart, and muscle spasms.

Hysteria and women had been linked together since 2000 B.C., when healers observed that woman did nor release fluids like men during sexual intercourse and reasoned that fluids accumulate in the uterus where they caused a variety of problems and irrational behavior. Plato believed than in serious cases their uterus could fill with so much fluid it would become death and strangle its owner. These views persisted into the Victorian era.

20120222-Women_of_Amfiss.jpg
Women of Amfiss by Alma-Tadema

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024


This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of country or topic discussed in the article. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from factsanddetails.com, please contact me.