
Ancient Greek & Roman Medicine
You're Dead to Me
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The Normal State of Health
In antiquity, people were unwell most of the time and health was a state they only fleetingly experienced. The idea that Roman civilization was so advanced we have diseases that flourished is not something I like to think about. But there are also reasons people are ill all the time: smoke from cooking, fumes from chamber parts, urban density. They had a sense of cleanliness but they didn't have a sense of germs in the same way that we do.
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