This meeting aims at bringing together not only classicists and historians of medicine but also medical anthropologists and medical practitioners to discuss the figure of the ‘patient’ in ancient medicine. In particular, this meeting aims at shifting the focus from the ancient doctors’ authoritative discourses about their profession, knowledge, theories and practices to reconstruct, to whatever extent this is possible, the role, position and experience of the patient.

The focus of this meeting is primarily the classical and post-classical medical texts and artifacts of Greece and Rome. However, we would also like to receive papers on comparative aspects of the role and the position of the patient in the classical and post-classical worlds with reference to, for instance, Chinese or Near Eastern medical texts and artifacts (although always with Greece and Rome as comparandum). Our definition of medical text and artifact is a broad one: any piece of text (to include papyri and inscriptions) or pieces of material culture which can throw light on the underrated part of the patient in the healing experience is of relevance here. We welcome contributions (ca. 30 minutes) primarily (but not exclusively) on the following issues:

1. The role of the patient in ancient medical texts and artifacts

2. The role of consolation (παραμυθία) in ancient medicine

3. The patient’s responsibility for choosing the best physician and the criteria for this choice

4. Case histories and “characters”: patients in Hippocratic and Galenic texts, their similarities and differences

5. The patient as ‘argument’: patients and their illnesses in the Hippocratic and Galenic corpus

6. Ready obedience (εὐπείθεια-ὑπακοή) and the patient’s admiration for the doctor as factors of (un)successful treatment

7. Ancient ‘autopathographies’

8. Ethics, etiquette and bed-side manners and their role in the therapeutic process

9. The emotions of the patient about their own illnesses: depression, hope and despair, shame and embarrassment, guilt, etc.

10. Material aspects of the patient-doctor relationship: the fees of the doctor and his professional accountability

11. Gender issues and social status in the patient-doctor relationship

12. Empathy with the patient in the medical writers

13. The patient’s self-image (e.g. the ‘hypochondriac’ patient, and so on)

Our confirmed keynote speakers are Prof. Manfred Horstmanshoff (Internationales Kolleg Morphomata, University of Cologne, DE), Prof. Helen King (Open University, UK), Prof. Susan Mattern (University of Georgia, USA), and Prof. John M. Wilkins (University of Exeter, UK).

We welcome titles and abstracts of 300 words maximum on any of the listed topic (or other related subjects). The deadline is 1st November 2011 at the latest. Please send your abstracts or enquiries, along with a short bio, to the organizers:

Chiara Thumiger (chiara.thumiger@hu-berlin.de)
Georgia Petridou (georgia.petridou@hu-berlin.de)
http://www.classicsmedicine.org/Aktuelles

‘Medicine of the Mind – Philosophy of the body’. Discourses of Health and Well Being in the Ancient World
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Klassische Philologie
Unter den Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin