Roman Wine Study Guide

Galen began his medical school training at the young age of 16, at the medical school of Pergamum. He became a surgeon to the gladiators, where he gained fame and that led him to become the greatest physician of ancient Rome. He further advanced the medicinal foundation that Hippocrates had laid out. He had a yearning to gain knowledge about the human anatomy and how the organs function, and throughout his journey, he became a well-known anatomist. Galen has been considered to be the discoverer of pulse diagnoses, which is still heavily relied on. He founded the system of Galenic degrees, which assisted health care providers to evaluate the effects of medicines. His most famous formula was Theriac, which was a concoction conceived of sixty four different ingredients that he believed was a cure-all for many diseases. Galen performed experiments on living apes in order to further gain knowledge about anatomy and physiology. In doing so, he became one of the first physiologists to research kidney functions and the spinal cord. Galen’s most significant contribution was that of the pneuma, the necessary circulation of air within the body for normal systemic functioning of the body’s organs. Galen strongly believed in the idea that form follows function, and that in order to understand any organ’s function, its form must be studied first.

Beginning as an exotic foreign drink in Mesopotamia that few could afford, wine rose in popularity over time and became the main beverage of Greece and Rome. In Mesopotamia wine was restricted to an elite group of people who were able to afford it. As time went on wine slowly became more accessible to people of lower classes. Standage explains it as “ As the volumes grew and prices fell, wine became more accessible to a broader segment of society” (Standage 49). The vine rapidly took hold throughout Greece and the Greek began to produce wine on a large scale. This is what lead to the immense cultivation of grapevines and olives over grain farming. Drinking wine was viewed as more civilized than the consumption of beer by the Greeks and the

Wine was a popular drink back in ancient Rome. Many people desired the consumption of wine as it grew to be an important factor in Rome’s trade. Wine allowed Rome to control more territory. Also many new people started writing books on how wine was produced like Cato the Censor, Varro, and Columella. These works provided insight on how wine played a part in Roman culture. Consumption of wine started bringing taxes on the quantity people drank. However, wine was an essential need in everyday life. The trading of wine helped Rome many beneficial ways because it allowed the Romans to get different goods from many places and it also allowed their empire to expand in territory and influence.

It was exotic and expensive. The author says “So fine was the calibration of wine with status that drinkers at a Roman banquet, or convivium, would be served different wines depending on their positions in society.” The richest drank the finest wines while poorer citizens drank lesser vintages and so on the social ladder. Wine was also religious. Wine influence on the history of the society started in ancient Greece, wine became the main export of a vast seaborne trade, helping to spread Greek culture abroad. It was a form of currency. I agree with the author’s assessment on the impact of wine. I agree because without wine it probably wouldn’t been involved with religious activities unless it was discovered later down the

Wine is made of fermented juice of crushed grapes stored over time. “Natural yeasts, present on the grape skins, convert the sugars in the juice into alcohol.” Explains author, Tom Standage [page 47]. One-way wine was consumed, by the Greeks, was by mixing water with the wine before intake. In order to figure out how much wine to add, the Greeks used ratios to determine the amount of water to wine. Wine started out as a drink for the wealthy, which involved “drinking parties”, called Symposions. Eventually, it didn’t matter whether you drank wine or not. What mattered was which type of wine you

Considered one of the greatest minds in Medicine, and the Philosophy of Medicine since history was recorded, Galen of Pergamon remains to this day one of the most profound physicians, and medical researchers that lived. We know this, because of his massive account of everything, he at times had anywhere from 10-20 scribes writing down all of his ideas and theories as well as his thoughts and findings during the many surgical procedures he undertook. “His surviving writings make up about half of all ancient writings on medicine today”(Agita) Although Galen philosophised frequently he never viewed himself as a Philosopher, in fact he held hostility towards some of the Philosophers of

From the beginnings of the Early Modern Period medicine was essentially summed up in high mortality rates and the notion that men and women were two completely different people anatomically, treatments were largely herbal and the type of doctor you went to see depended on what was wrong with you and if you could afford them . “Attaining and preserving a state of health, therefore, required balance, and that equilibrium was inherently elusive and easily forfeited” . However, while there was some progress in this field throughout the period it was not as drastic as one would expect, the Galenic body of the four humours was still a dominant

“According to Alixe Bovey, the Greek physicians Galen and the hippocrates ideas set out a theory of the human body relating to the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water as well as the four bodily humours blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile (Bovey).”

New problems arose after Marcus Aurelius died in a.d.180. Rome Empire came near collapse in the third century. Following a series of civil wars, the military government under the Severan rulers restored order. After the Severan rulers restored order there was more disorder from 235 to 284 almost 50 years. Rome was occupied by whoever had the military strength to invade Rome.

Galen visionary medicine, devotion, and passion contributed a great deal to the way medicine is practiced today. His quote “We must wait and observe” proved to us how after a long time of practiced and researched everything will all pay off in the end. Thanks to his outstanding practice in medicine, today we are familiar with the route of diagnosis and prognosis, we have the knowledge of the circulatory system, and he opened the way for the operations of the eye and the brain which still hold true and are used

The divergence between the rich class and the lower class was reflected by the wine contents in their goblets. Case in point, the more wealth a Roman was, the greater their ability to recognize and name the finest wines were. In addition, both civilizations used wine as a mark of social sophistication. For the Greeks, wine drinking correlated closely to refinement and civilization. The type of wine chosen

Although the two are both Mediterranean countries, but Greece had a major influence on the development of Roman arts, governmental system, literature, and many more. In a way, Romans internalized a set of Greek values which they ingeniously conflated Greek traditional charm with Roman local idioms, then continuously built on that solid foundation and made some exciting breakthroughs thereafter. In addition, as Noreen Gunnell (2012) indicated, "ancient Romans loved all things Greek. In the highest form of flattery, the Romans copied Greek architecture, sculpture, and mythology...

Galen’s medical doctrine dominated the Western and Arab worlds. He is famous for bringing philosophy into medicine. He created a long-lasting medical doctrine by incorporating the work of previous Greek medical researchers,

Galen. Galen was a physician of Greek descent and was well known for his influences on the medieval medical world. Galen mainly did experiments on animals rather than humans which caused his humanistic generations to be inaccurate. Galen was able to take color of a patient’s urine to be able to tell what was wrong with him/her.

Better known as the personal physician for the Roman Emperors, Galen was the forefront of medicine, practicing surgery, anatomy, pharmaceutical medicine as well as natural therapeutic means. After receiving his doctorate, he applied his own techniques to the ancient medicinal techniques he had witnessed all around the Mediterean. Although his research has been lost, he brought philosophy into the medical world. His earlier practices and research are considered very useful today by the medical industry.