Soigner et servir: Histoire sociale et culturelle de la médecine grecque à l'époque hellénistique (review)

The subtitle of this book, "a social and cultural history of Greek medicine in the Hellenistic period," is somewhat misleading, since it deals almost exclusively with elite medicine. Such a focus partly reflects the nature of the sources available, but that is not the whole story. Natacha Massar says that she is interested in the medical practice in the cities and in the courts of Hellenistic kings—but that means excluding the extensive evidence for the practice of medicine in, for example, the Egyptian chora (the subject of an important recent study by Philippa Lang). In the first three chapters of the book, dealing with the engagement, recognition, and mobility of Hellenistic doctors, Dr. Massar draws very largely on the epigraphic evidence, especially that relating to decrees honoring practicing doctors for their services. But by definition, ordinary doctors do not figure in that record. Although there are a few inscriptions referring to women doctors, and some to freedmen, Massar does not comment on the difficulty that they generally faced in winning renown.

In the second part of the book, Massar considers doctors as "artisans" of paideia—that is, of culture and education—and discusses their contributions to philological scholarship, to pharmacology, and to dietetics. Here a broader range of evidence is taken into account, including that in the lives of doctors, in the stories about their interactions with kings and other members of the elite, as well as the treatises attributed to them and to nonmedical writers in those fields. But once again interest is concentrated on the elite. In the discussion of dietetics, for instance, there are remarks on treatises on gastronomy, and on symposia, but no mention of the actual nutritional state of the patients whom the doctors had to treat (the subject of important work by Robert Sallares and by Peter Garnsey).

Yet another surprising omission relates to temple medicine. Many of the cited inscriptions were found in the Asklepeion at Cos. Yet the tensions between the practices of those who offered naturalistic treatment and those who put their faith in the help the gods could give is not discussed. To be sure, one of the richest sources for this, Aelius Aristides in the second century CE, dates from after the period that chiefly concerns Dr. Massar. But there are important continuities between what is reported from the shrines already in the fourth century BCE and the practices and beliefs to which Aristides refers, and this deserves note—not least because the clientele of temple medicine encompassed members from all strata of society.

Within the restricted limits of the study, however, Massar's analysis is extremely thorough. Greek cities, she argues, often had quite specific motives when they decided to think of hiring a public doctor, the imminent threat of war being one of them. When a city faced economic hardship from one source or another, we can understand why some inscriptions express particular gratitude to doctors who offered their services for free. A further argument that is developed with some originality here relates to the diplomatic role of doctors: the way in which their circulation between different states could foster interstate relations, and may have been deliberately used—by Cos in particular—for that end. The lectures that doctors gave in part to establish their own credentials, in part in the context of the embassies they were asked to serve on, represent an interesting area of overlap between elite medicine and rhetoric. Indeed, many of the stories that circulated about the relations between doctors and kings bear a close similarity to those that deal with philosophers and tyrants. That in turn makes more difficult the task of evaluating such topoi as evidence for anything more than the way in which the image of doctors was cultivated. But then it has to be said that throughout...