Introduction

This episode on roman health and medicine originally came by a question from mark porton in queensland, australia. A lot is changed between now and then, so you have to give them some leeway. Some of the medical practices they used showed forward thinking, but you might have to ignore the cabbages. There's really two strands to roman medicine, at least in imperial times. The head of the family was in charge of looking after the health of the entire household. So traditionally, that was how medicine was practised. It was certainly not professional. I must make childbirth awkward. it probably did, yes.