Speaker: Laurence Totelin, Cardiff University.
Talk: Beyond medical pluralism: Interactions between physician-pharmacists and other craftspeople in the Graeco-Roman world
Abstract: While there is a growing body of scholarship on the ancient ‘medical marketplace’, that is, the plurality of healers available to patients in the ancient world, the interactions between healers and other types of craftspeople are far less studied. Yet, physicians and pharmacists, which within the context of this paper are considered as a single category, interacted with and relied upon numerous craftspeople in the exercise of their trade: potters moulded various pots; smiths created instruments and pans; woodworkers crafted storage systems; stone engravers inscribed medicinal stamps; perfume makers provided key ingredients for the preparation of medicinal products.
This paper examines several examples of these interactions between healers and other craftspeople: some are explicitly discussed by ancient medical authors, such as Galen; others are more implicit and must be teased out from our sources. The paper concludes that healers generally, and physicians in particular, were part of an ecosystem of craftspeople, in which hierarchies may not always have been those that we find presented in the works of medical authors.
