The Birth of Physiology
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The treatment of mental health has been rapidly growing and improving over the past few decades, but it actually goes back thousands of years.
Whether it was the Ancient Greek physician Galen’s humoral theory - in which people’s mental health was determined by imbalances in the levels of four different substances in the body - or Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ meditations for guidance and self-improvement, ideas of mental health and its treatment have ranged from the intriguing to the totally bizarre, but many of them still have uses to this day.
Tristan is joined once again by Dr Nick Summerton practicing doctor and author of ‘Greco-Roman Medicine and What it Can Teach Us Today’, published by Pen & Sword.
The OSPP Four Temperaments Test
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Engines on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and it's |
| 0:17.3 | Dave's podcast, well this week is Mental Health Awareness Week and you might |
| 0:21.5 | have noticed on other History Hit podcast this week that we've been releasing |
| 0:24.7 | episodes looking at the history of mental health in various time periods |
| 0:28.6 | whether that's the Middle Ages or early modern or perhaps more recent history. |
| 0:32.7 | And state we're going to be doing a similar thing on the ancient podcast. We're |
| 0:36.7 | talking all about the birth of physiology. We're going to be exploring this idea |
| 0:40.6 | of the four humans with our guest today who is Dr Nick Summerton. Nick has been |
| 0:45.9 | on the podcast a couple of times before last year. He came on the podcast to talk |
| 0:49.8 | all about Roman Ike was quite a gory episode but it was really interesting |
| 0:53.7 | nonetheless and he also came on to talk about the Ansonine plague figures |
| 0:58.2 | such as Marcus Orrelius Galen and so. Now I mentioned Marcus Orrelius and Galen. |
| 1:03.4 | Both of them will be talking about in today's podcast too. We're going to be |
| 1:06.9 | covering once again this idea of stoicism and idea which I think is very very |
| 1:10.4 | important indeed and very significant but we're also going to be talking about |
| 1:13.8 | other figures. The figure who in not sure was just one figure Hippocrates and |
| 1:18.3 | how he fits into this whole birth of physiology but also we're going to be |
| 1:22.6 | looking at things such as Roman health retreats around the second century and |
| 1:27.6 | on from there. But that's enough from me without further ado to talk all about |
| 1:32.7 | the birth of physiology and so much more. Here's Nick. |
| 1:40.0 | Nick it is great to see you again. Thank you so much for coming back on the |
| 1:43.6 | podcast. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Now we mean you've been on the podcast |
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