Article ID: CBB001201453

Le serpent, source de santé: le corps des serpents dans la thérapeutique gréco-romaine (2012)

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Gaillard-Seux, Patricia (Author)


Anthropozoologica
Volume: 47, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 263-289


Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: [Snakes as a source of health: the use of their body in Graeco-Roman medical practices] In French.
Language: French

Authorities for this paper are principally the works by physicians, like Dioscorides, Aretaeus or Galen, and the books dealing with remedies in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Ancient medicine prescribed treatments including the adder, but snakes without specification were also much employed and many other snakes, venomous or not, were also used, but less frequently than the adder, according to Pliny. Physicians needed the whole animal or some parts of it, like sloughing, fat, flesh, and sometimes head and gall. Curiously, despite their preference for the adder, they often tried to eliminate the venom during the preparation or use of the remedies, the venom indeed not being seen in the same light as it is now. Diseases were cured by application of the principle of Let like be cured by like (snake bites, skin illnesses, etc.) and using specific powers ascribed to snakes (for example: good sight to cure eye problems). Except for incorporating adder flesh pastilles in theriac, snakes were not a basic ingredient of the Greek and Roman physicians' pharmacopoeia, because there was an ambivalent attitude towards venom. Nevertheless, these animals seem to have been more frequently used in magic or in popular medicine, according to some texts by Pliny.

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Authors & Contributors
Mutalik, Gururaj
Tillu, Girish
Patwardhan, Bhushan
Singer, Peter Nicholas
Marmodoro, Anna
Harms, Paul Jonathan
Concepts
Medicine
Health
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Philosophy of medicine
Toxins and antitoxins
Science and culture
Time Periods
Ancient
Renaissance
Places
Greece
Rome (Italy)
Mediterranean region
Bulgaria
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