History Memes

Took until the 16th century before considerable advancements in medical theory were pushed forward, and while surpassed in quality in the 17th century, the Graeco-Roman herbal text De Materia Medica remained widely used up to the middle of the 19th century because it records a great deal of symptom treatment - which is something verifiable and useful. Graeco-Roman medical thought also valued cleanliness, and washing wounds with vinegar or strong wine was a recommended practice - something later European society forgot about around 1750-1850. Class is a funny fucking thing, and doctors were getting 'higher' class at that point. You wouldn't accuse a GENTLEMAN of being UNCLEAN, would you? Then why are you insisting his hands are always dirty and need washing!?

Part of it is that good design is hard to beat, like stone-age tools that resemble their modern counterparts; and part of it is that Europe took some time to recover from civilizational collapse. But two parts relevant to a Romaboo like me are that the Romans were immensely practical, and immensely warlike: they preferred practical solutions over theoretical medical musing, and highly valued surgeons (and employed a LOT of them) in treating wounded soldiery. Roman surgery, for that reason, is generally regarded as being in an improved state compared to prior Greek medicine, even though it largely shares the same theoretical and academic basis. The Romans had a lot of practice and respected the art of surgery more. It was somewhat less respected by the Greeks, who regarded surgery as more 'blue collar' work than the more academic position of a general physician; conversely, Romans always had a deep-seated suspicion of physicians, even when they recognized their usefulness. TOO THINKY, GREEKS SCARY.

The Romans may not have had any better idea to cure malaria than rubbing lion fat on yourself (it doesn't work, but maybe you can placebo yourself into some temporary relief), but they also knew that you could treat a fever with willow bark or induce some numbing and sleep with hensbane. They may have been at the mercy of plagues, but as far as times and places to die less-painfully, or actually survive a physical wound, you could do a lot worse than the Roman Empire. At least, if you had the money to pay a physician! No government healthcare here! XD

Alternatively, humor theory (which also lasted until the 19th century 😬) is not particularly useful in treating disease, but at least offers a more rational, cause-and-effect notion of human health than prior notions of spirituality. The Romans, in being mildly anti-intellectual, actually accidentally improved their health in this sense - many of their cures (and the cures of Roman-era Greek physicians, influenced by the demands of their Roman clients) practically disregarded the notion of humors (while acknowledging their theoretical validity), or else sought a post-hoc explanation for existing effective practices. Romans were also more fond of the idea of a balanced diet and regular exercise as medicine.

They still had a lot of ridiculous shit - magic spells and rituals, amulets, prayers, snake oil cures, "I heard a guy who heard a guy who cured himself by eating nothing but honey for a week", bloodletting (another practice which lasted until the 19th fucking century - thank you 19th century doctors for innovating and saving us from so much barbarity in that century), etc - but they made a damn good effort at health that we could broadly recognize as useful in the modern day.

... funny enough, despite the general Roman lack of contribution to theoretical thought, the Roman scholar Varro actually did contribute an early form of microbe theory in his observations about swamp sicknesses, which was actually taken seriously by the Graeco-Roman academic community (albeit in a limited, 'some diseases might actually be caused by this' rather than the more general 'most diseases are spread by germs' conception in the modern day).