Thucydides: Clinical Analysis

During the fourteenth century a disease ravaged across the middle east that calculated up to fifty million deaths and impoverished half of Europe. This disastrous disease had attained the nick-name, “Black Death”, referring to its high fatality rate. The plague, as some may call it, scattered amongst the whole world taking many lives because of the lack of medical attention or treatment and is even still around till this day. The Black Death is best understood through its symptoms, treatments, and death toll changing life in the fourteenth century.

We find that the “oldest written sources of western medicine are The Hippocratic writings from the 5th and 4th centuries BC; which covers all aspects of medicine at that time and contain numerous medical terms.”(Wulff) This was the beginning of the Greek era of the language of medicine, which lasted even after the Roman

The Athenian plague was an epidemic that began in the summer of 430 B.C. in Athens—a year after the Peloponnesian war in 431 B.C. It was supposed that the plague was a result of excess number of Athenians within the city walls also known as the long walls—a military strategy by Pericles which consisted of building walls that connected the city to its port . The surplus of Athenians led to a shortage of food, water, an absence of sewage systems, and other important factors were said to have brought about the plague. It first appeared in the south of Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and later on in the Persian Empire, and Rome before arriving in Athens . The disease attacked the population of Piraeus and then travelled to

The logic and principles of medieval medicine shaped those of Modern medicine. Never was there a more efficient method perfected, so much that it remained through history through so many hundreds of years. Today’s concepts of diagnosis, relationships with the church, anatomy, surgery, hospitals and training, and public health were established in the Middle Ages.

The word “plague” is defined as a contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium, typically with the formation of buboes, and sometimes infection of the lungs. The article entitled, “On the Progress of the Black Death”, written by Jean de Venette, a French Carmelite friar who was a leading clergyman around Paris at the time of the Black Death, is a well-known account of the spread of the plague in Northern Europe. In this account, Jean de Venette explained the history of the plague, its causes and its consequences.

When the plague first infected a person, it began with swellings in the groin and armpit (Document 2). Some of the swellings could be the size of an apple or an egg (ibid.)! After the first swellings appeared, the whole body would soon be covered in dark and bluish grey spots (ibid.). Soon after these spots covered the body, death would be upon the infected person within days (ibid.). Many doctors tried to cure people of these symptoms, but many failed (ibid.) This was because of the nature of the illness or the ignorance of the doctors’ (ibid.). The doctors didn’t know enough about the disease to be able to effectively treat their patients’

Prior to 18th century Europe there were a few effective medical developments but most treatments lacked medical value. An idea developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans insisted that bloodletting was a fantastic remedy to difficult diseases but it did more harm than good (Doc 4). Another flaw in medicine is the level of hygiene in the institutions that provided care. The sick were crammed into dirty hospitals, dead lay beside those clinging to life, and the air was

The disease also spread through the many people who went to the Colosseum, were death and blood was everywhere. As this continued more and more people started to drink and become incompetent.

The bubonic plague, or Black Death, was a devastating plague in the fourteenth century that wreaked havoc in Europe and the Middle East. In Europe the plague killed nearly one third of the population. In the Middle East it killed between twenty-five and thirty-three percent of the Egyptian and Syrian population (DBQ: The Black Death, 2010). However numbers are not the only evidence of how miserable the disease

In medicine there were many things that changed and some that stayed the same between 1350 and 1750. Initially I will be looking at medicine and treatment in the Ancient World as a prelude to its importance during the Renaissance period, and also the influence it may have had in the Middle Ages.

The pandemic known to history as the Black Death was one of the world’s worst natural disasters in history. It was a critical time for many as the plague hit Europe and “devastated the Western world from 1347 to 1351, killing 25%-50% of Europe’s population and causing or accelerating marked political, economic, social, and cultural changes.” The plague made an unforgettable impact on the history of the West. It is believed to have originated somewhere in the steppes of central Asia in the 1330s and then spread westwards along the caravan routes. It spread over Europe like a wildfire and left a devastating mark wherever it passed. In its first few weeks in Europe, it killed between 100 and 200 people per day. Furthermore, as the weather became colder, the plague worsened, escalating the mortality rate to as high as 750 deaths per day. By the spring of 1348, the death toll may have reached 1000 a day. One of the main reasons the plague spread so quickly and had such a devastating effect on Europe was ultimately due to the lack of medical knowledge during the medieval time period.

A sickness which started in the head then developed to affect every part of the body, is an under-rated, mild description of the Plague of Athens. Thucydides explains that the plague not only harshly affected men’s physical bodies, but also their actions. People began to become fearful of becoming infected, which caused them to avoid visiting friends and family members who were afflicted with the disease. Furthermore, the plague also negatively affected the character of the Athenian people. The intense fear of having the disease even motivated men to “become indifferent to every rule of religion or of law”: individuals began to act self-indulgently because they believed that they would not be alive long enough to be brought to trial or punished.

The very first chapter of None of These Diseases, written by McMillen and Stern is very short. It sets the stage to allow the reader to grasp the concept on how much medicine has changed over the centuries. It is absurd to read what the doctors thought that they knew back 1500 B.C. It is also eye opening to see how much medicine has advanced and keeps on advancing. One cannot help but wonder what modern medicine will look like in a hundred years. It will be very interesting to see what man thinks he knows today be completed changed. This chapters ends with discussion about Moses preaching about God’s health rules. It is interesting that while Moses was a well-educated Egyptian, he did not write about the medical practices he learned at school, yet instead he discussed what God has told him too. These practices have not been proven wrong today.

The Plague, which had originated, in central Africa, was slowly spreading, and soon reached Constantinople.(Potter,190) The effect was devastating, thousands died, the economy was failing, since its sources could no longer make the products. Taxes fell, people were driven mad with grief. And in the center of this, was Theodora and Justinian. But all their worries increased, when Justinian himself got the Plague.

The great plague came in three different forms. The types of illness differed in symptoms, spread and sufferings. The bubonic plague was the diseases most common form. It was named this due to swelling called “buboes” of the victim’s lymph nodes. “These tumors could range in size from that of an egg to that of an apple” (The Black Death). The longest expectancy with this form of illness didn’t often exceed one week. The second variation of plague was known as the “pneumatic