RESUMO
In the year 430 B.C., at the beginning of the second year of the Peloponessian War, a terrible epidemic fell upon Athens and the most populous cities in Attica. It would last for just over four years and it would kill 100.000 people, a quarter to a third of the population. We know about it through the masterly description made by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. His narrative has withstood twenty five centuries due to its medical interest and, above all, its great dramatic force. The description of symptoms and signs, their evolution, and the consequences upon persons and moral and social order has captivated physicians, philologists and classical historians ever since. It has inspired literary works and hundreds of medical articles, with no agreement having been reached upon its cause or consequences, or if it is history or tragedy, or even if there is a single answer to these alternatives.
En el año 430 a.C., al iniciarse el segundo año de la guerra del Pelo-poneso, una terrible epidemia se desató en Atenas y en las ciudades más populosas de Ática. Duraría algo más de cuatro años y morirían unas 100.000 personas, un cuarto a un tercio de la población. Sabemos de ella a través de la magistral descripción que Tucídides hace en su Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso. Su relato ha perdurado por 25 siglos por su interés médico y, sobre todo, por su gran fuerza dramática. La descripción de los síntomas y signos, su evolución y las consecuencias sobre las personas y sobre el orden social y moral ha cautivado a médicos, filólogos e historiadores. Ha inspirado obras literarias y cientos de artículos sobre la etiología de la plaga sin que hasta el momento exista acuerdo sobre qué fue, si es historia o tragedia, e incluso, si es que hay una respuesta única a estas alternativas.
Assuntos
História Antiga , Humanos , Epidemias/história , Peste/história , GréciaRESUMO
This article examines the parallel histories of medicine and history to about 1450. They emerged together as part of the shift from poetry to prose in Greek culture in the fifth century BC. They each pursued similar strategies of observation, compilation, and analysis. Hippocratic medicine provided a paradigm for Thucydides‟ development of analytic history. Medicine was further systematised by Galen in the second century AD. After the collapse and division of the Roman Empire, the Dar al-Islam became the main area of intellectual advance. Its scholars had little interest in Graeco-Roman historians, but they translated and used the scientific and medical writers. In both history and medicine they tried to create sciences based on Aristotelian philosophy. The article looks in particular at Avicenna‟s attempt to reconcile Aristotle and Galen, and compares this with the eighteenth century debate between preformationists and epigeneticists. It emphasises the need to look at such arguments in the context of their times, and notes the continuing tension between the simplicity of theory and the messiness of data. The transfer of learning from the Dar al-Islam into Western Europe paralleled that from the Graeco-Roman world into the Dar al-Islam. Again, historical writing was overlooked, but philosophical, scientific, and medical writers were translated. They would be the basis for the development of modern science.