Curing the Common Cold the Ancient Greek Way

I have a cold. It happened when someone at work caught a cold and quickly gave it to someone else who commenced sneezing every five minutes, which then resulted in someone else coughing on the alternate five minutes and before I knew it I was sat in the middle of a triptych of sneezing, coughing, germ spewing colleagues.

Hippocrates from the floor of the Asclepieion at Kos

Having suffered through my cold with a brave face and eschewing any paracetamol or the like, my mind turned to how I might of faired in Ancient Greece, perhaps under the care of the mighty Hippocrates or within the walls of the Temple of Asclepius.

It's highly likely however that my soar throat, headache and general state of illness wouldn't of warranted too much worry in ancient Greece. A journey to the Temple of Asclepius might have been in order and would have no doubt soon sorted out the problem. There is record of a lady scoffing at the "incredible or impossible" cures that the healing God offered within his temple. However falling asleep she was visited by the god in a dream who told her he would cure her, but she owed him a silver pig as recompense for her stupidity in not believing

"after saying this he operated on her diseased eye and poured a drug into it. And when day came she left the temple cured"

A Record of Cures from the Temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus from the Late 4th Century

The Culture of Athens CA 393 IG IV 121.4

This fragment describes how a treatment would occur at a Temple of Asclepius. The patient would enter an induced sleep, where upon they would have a dream in which the god would come to them and tell them the cure for their illness or perform an operation. If the treatment failed it was merely a case of asking the god to impart his wisdom again. 

In an attempt to cure my cold, it might have been better to visit the great father of medicine, Hippocrates. Famously a man who drank the urine of his patients to detect an imbalance in the body (as well as smelled their excrement and all other manner of bodily functions) he is seen as the founder of modern medicine.

"The body of man contains in itself, blood and phlegm and yellow and black bile, and these are the constituents of the nature of the body, and the cause of pain and good health"

Hippocrates On the Nature of Man 4

The Culture of Athens CA 389

A man was in the best health when all these composite parts, what he named "humours", were in perfect balance with each other and suffered a pain when one was in deficiency or not mixing with the others. Hippocrates also believed that through prognosis and the use of previous knowledge in the whole of the body, he would be able to cure someone.

"His treatment would be most effective if based on foreknowledge of the consequences of the present symptoms"

Hippocrates Prognostic 1

Culture of Athens CA 387

Colossal Head of Asclepius from the British Museum

Perhaps I would of been safer still to visit Galen. Practising medicine in the early 2nd Century AD, he added a great deal to the teachings of Hippocrates. Galen rose to be the doctor to the emperors, men like Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus were all his patients. He was in Rome for the time of the Antonine Plague and is revered for his diagnostic skills and how particular he was in the writing out and prescribing of his medicines.

Whether a visit from Asclepius in my dreams, Hippocrates tasting my urine for an imbalance or the careful prescribing of medicine by Galen would of had more affect on curing my cold than the very hot bath and long nap that I prescribed myself, is a question never to be answered. 

However medicine, operations and specialists did exist in the ancient Greek world. The temples of Asclepius specialised in different areas of the body, Hippocrates was so famous and successful that doctors still swear his oath today and Galen influenced knowledge of the human body, more than few others. 

So next time you reach for the paracetamol, perhaps a silver pig as payment to the god and a dream inspired cure in the Temple of Asclepius would be a better option.

Thanks for Reading

James