The Archaeology Of Medicine And Healthcare

The maintenance of human health and the mechanisms by which this is achieved – through medicine, medical intervention and care-giving – are fundamentals of human societies. However, archaeological investigations of medicine and care have tended to examine the obvious and explicit manifestations of medical treatment as discrete practices that take place within specific settings, rather than as broader indicators of medical worldviews and health beliefs. This volume highlights the importance of medical worldviews as a means of understanding healthcare and medical practice in the past. The volume brings together ten chapters, with themes ranging from a bioarchaeology of Neanderthal healthcare, to Roman air quality, decontamination strategies at Australian quarantine centres, to local resistance to colonial medical structures in South America. Within their chapters the contributors argue for greater integration between archaeology and both the medical and environmental humanities, while the Introduction presents suggestions for future engagement with emerging discourse in community and public health, environmental and planetary health, genetic and epigenetic medicine, 'exposome' studies and ecological public health, microbiome studies and historical disability studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of World Archaeology.

This book teaches students and scholars of Greco-Roman medical history how to use and critically assess archaeological materials. Ancient medicine is a subject dominated by textual sources, yet there is a wealth of archaeological remains that can be used to broaden our understanding of medicine in the past. In order to use the information properly, this book explains how to ask questions of an archaeological nature, how to access different types of archaeological materials, and how to overcome problems the researcher might face. It also acts as an introduction to the archaeology of medicine for archaeologists interested in this aspect of their subject. Although the focus is on the Greco-Roman period, the methods and theories explained within the text can be applied to other periods in history. The areas covered include text as material culture, images, artifacts, spaces of medicine, and science and archaeology.

In this book, Dale Hutchinson traces the history of American health care and well-being from the colonial era to the present, drawing on evidence from material culture and historical documents to offer insights into the long-standing tension between traditional and institutionalized cures, as well as the emergence of the country’s unique brand of medical consumerism. Hutchinson outlines three major trends that have influenced the course of American medicine—the convergence of different ancestral traditions, the formalization of the medical industry, and the rise of individual choice. He discusses how health challenges in the emergent nation led to increased numbers of health care specialists, and how in turn the developing prestige and lucrative nature of the medical profession caused widespread public distrust. Depicting the Civil War as a turning point in attitudes about health, Hutchinson demonstrates how sanitation and hygiene became important emphases of domestic life in the postbellum period. He also describes subsequent trends in self-care. Throughout, Hutchinson incorporates lessons learned from artifacts such as medical tools and the packaging of tonics, pills, salves, and other curatives. Looking back on this history from the perspective of the contemporary landscape of health care and wellness in the United States, Hutchinson points out that weaknesses in the system that became apparent amid the COVID-19 pandemic were the result of changes that have been unfolding since the founding of the nation.

How healthy were people in ancient Greece and Rome, and how did they think about maintaining and restoring their health? For students of classics, history or the history of medicine, answers to these and many previously untouched questions are dealt with by renowned ancient historians, classical scholars and archaeologists. Using a multidisciplined approach, the contributors assess the issues surrounding health in the Greco-Roman world from prehistory to Christian late antiquity. Sources range from palaeodemography to patristic and from archaeology to architecture and using these, this book considers what health meant, how it was thought to be achieved, and addresses how the ancient world can be perceived as an ideal in subsequent periods of history.

Covers individual medical care, public health and the relationship between religion and medicine in Roman Britain. This book examines the archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence for health care in Roman Britain, set in the context of the Roman Empire.

This book teaches students and scholars of Greco-Roman medical history how to use and critically assess archaeological materials.

Foucault's classic study of the history of medicine.