It's the Ancient's on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we're talking about ancient Roman medicine. In particular we're going to be focusing on

ancient Roman eye care. The Romans as you're about to find out they had quite a lot of trouble

sometimes with their eyes and the treatments are shall we say interesting to say the least.

Now joining me on the podcast I was delighted to get back on the show Dr Nick Summerton. Nick

he's been on the podcast once before to talk about lessons from the Ansonine plague but Nick

as you're about to find out he's also quite an expert on ancient Roman eye care on the archaeology

and the literature that survives. Now I must give fair warning about this podcast because in part of

it yes we do delve into what we know about gory ancient Roman eye surgery. If you're not a fan of

that gory detail then when you hear of it coming because we do announce it you might want to

skip over that part but without further ado here's Nick. Nick thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you very much. I'd like to focus on another area that I know you've done a lot of work on

particularly around ancient medicine and this is around ancient Roman eye care. Yes again an

infectious disease like the Ansonine plague but something that seems to be particularly prevalent

in the Roman world and probably hygiene practices weren't quite as good as we'd like to be in

the water and baths for example was not as clean as marks radius comments on this himself you know

the horrible dirty water of bath houses not being changed as often as perhaps we would like.

So crowded bath houses, communications, porohydrate, gene practices, dusty roads all of these would

have contributed towards the rise of eye infections and I think there was also something about the

Romans' views about the eye as well you know both Pliny and natural historian who died unfortunately

at the time the eruption of Vesuvius and Kelsus again probably a doctor might have just been a

very knowledgeable writer in the first century they talk about the eyes being privileged body parts

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