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The paper presents the research on medicine in Greco-Roman Egypt conducted in the last forty years at the Centre de Documentation de Papyrologie Littéraire (CEDOPAL) at the University of Liège. It describes the main results obtained by deciphering, editing, translating and commenting Greek and Latin medical papyri, be they literary, documentary or magical.

The present paper proposes an account of my research on human and veterinary medicine in Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Egypt, undertaken since 2008 at the CEDOPAL at the University of Liège. This research focuses on literary papyri, particularly on the Anonymus Londiniensis (Hermopolis?, 2d half of the 1st).

The history of Roman pharmacology is ponctuated with ideological debates about relevance of this art. Thus, Hippocrates --a contemporary of Socrates who was teaching that "science of remedies and science of poisons are the same"--was given credit for favourable mood towards pharmaceuticals by Scribonius Largus on the basis of therapeutic complementarity. Among the Latin doctors of the late Roman Empire, Marcellus Empiricus and Caelius Aurelianus, Hippocrates appeared as an authority favourable towards medication, especially in a fictitious letter written by Marcellus to the Claudian emancipated slave Callistus. Likewise, popular philosophy has taken over the Socratic antinomy between remedia and uenena. Last but not least, Sextius Niger wrote a pharmacopoeia attested as an official source by Celsus and plentifully consulted by Pliny the Elder: the Naturalis historia allows to delimit Sextius' contribution to the recurring controversy about use of pharmaceuticals. In such a context, the antipharmaceutical argument entered by Asclepiades of Bithynia fulfils a provocative function, the historical impact of which needs to be assessed according to the present-day speculation about "useful, useless or dangerous medicines".

The debate which took place in the 1720s at the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Letters on the possibility or impossibility of understanding the history of the first centuries of Rome is generally interpreted to be less of a debate than an important epistemological clarification. A contextualization which takes into account the political stakes of the debate allows one to understand that the debate was the beginning of a larger process of the autonomisation of the field of historical studies, not only from the perspective of disciplinary divides, but also in relation to monarchal power.

In 1866, J. Langdon Down published a paper on "an ethnic classification of idiots" and noted their facial resemblance with individuals of the Mongolian people. In 1959, J. Lejeune, M. Gautier, and R. Turpin demonstrated that the children with Down syndrome had an extra copy of chromosome 21. There is now a debate within the medical literature on the age of trisomy 21 as a disease affecting mankind. Since it was not described before 1866, some authors questioned whether this disease is an old or new condition in humans. Three methods of investigation are useful for demonstrating that trisomy 21 has been present in humans for a long time: the figuration of this condition in historical paintings, figurines, and pottery; its presence in old skeletal remains; and the origin of human chromosome 21 during primate phylogeny. Figurines strongly suggestive of trisomy 21 have been found in the Greco-Roman world, in many Central and South American pre-Columbian cultures, and in Khmer temples. In Europe, during the Renaissance, Italian and Flemish artists represented trisomy 21 in paintings of religious inspiration. Studies on the origin and pathology of chromosome 21 have shown that the ancestral human chromosome 21 arose 30-50 million years ago and that trisomy 21 has existed since time immemorial., (Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier SAS.)

The author describes the rich relationship between young Galen, just arrived in Rome from his native Minor Asia, and Flavius Boethos a consul suffectus who was to become the governor of Syria, and asked him to cure his wife and then their son, Cyrillos. Although very famous, Galen who never became a Roman citizen, needed such a friend and social mentor.

The mythology of the Greeks and Romans is full of monsters of fiction: giants, cyclops, centaurs, hydras, Gorgons… The accounts of travelers, reproduced in the Natural History of Pline l'Ancien reported the existence, in distant countries, of men with a dog's head (baboons), of men with a single tall foot (sciapode), beings whose face is embedded in the chest (or acephala blemmyes), to which must be added a wide variety of men with no mouth, no nose, or equipped with giant ears or feet turned backwards, as well as hermaphrodites. Teratology reports on monstrous births, which have constituted the factual basis from which the imagination conceived adults whose morphology corresponds to the monsters of legend. Newborns sirenomelia were behind the legend of sciapode and sirens. Cyclopia have inspired the legend of the cyclops. Anencephaly probably explains the description of headless or blemmyes. The genesis of the legend of baboons may have multiple origins: firstly the existence of people suffering from congenital hypertrichosis, on the other hand, the influence of Egyptian mythology where the god Anubis has a dog's head. The acardiac fetus may explain some monstrous forms, features the work of Hieronymus Bosch. The significance of the monsters of legend, their genesis, their persistence through the ages is complex. By approaching teratology, we added a new field of exploration of real monsters of antiquity and Middle Ages., (Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier SAS.)

To elucidate the evolution of society over time, ancient medicine is a very interesting and important researching field. Archaeological discoveries, such as the objects described by this article, but other ancient sources, also, are able to provide a complex framework of medical practice in Roman times. The geographic area that we have like target in this material is the province of Lower Moesia, which includes the territory between Danube and Black Sea (Romanian Dobrodja) and northern Bulgaria. In the present study we present nine ancient medical instruments, from a private collection: two tweezers, two ear probes, a probe-spatula, a probe-spoon, a spoon for pharmacy and two fragments of some kind of hooks used in surgical operations. Most likely, we have a mixed medical kit with tools used in general medicine, surgery, in preparation of the pharmaceutical treatments, but very possible, also, in cosmetic practices. Publication of these archaeological materials is, in addition to an extra page in the history of ancient medicine, a pretext for stepping up in a research field that, in other regions of the former Roman Empire, it is a great interest for researchers.

In Roman society, parents often entrusted their newborn to a wet nurse, usually a slave or a lower-class freeborn woman, who normally lived with them. It was advised to choose with care the right person, as milk is not a neutral bodily substance but transmits many properties, physical and moral. Soranus devotes an entire chapter to the meticulous inspection of the nurse's milk and temper. The nurse's character must be checked as thoroughly as her physical health. The mind of the newborn, compared with wax, is from the start and forever impressed positively or negatively. Mnesitheus and others even advise choosing a woman resembling physically the mother, or a handsome person; Favorinus and others reject violently the recourse to wet nursing as immoral; submitting the child to the pernicious influence of a foreign non-kin person implies the destruction of family ties. Wet nurses had to follow a specific diet and to accept giving up their sexual life, which would corrupt the milk in case of a new pregnancy. Roman upper-class families attributed different qualities to nurses according to their ethnic origin: Egyptians were allegedly fond of children, Thracians robust and devoted, Spartans tough. The best were the Greeks, because they would teach Greek language - and culture - to their nurslings. The nurse's social function was extensive. Her role did not stop at the weaning period. Much evidence shows that she was a lifelong companion. In positive circumstances, she could construct non-kin relationships and became, through connections not of blood but of milk, a member of an extended family. Funerary inscriptions and literary sources show that some nurses were rewarded by freedom. Breast-feeding also created milk-ties between the nurslings, who could gain social elevation thanks to this bonding.

The first part of this paper explored the origins of the idea of Eugenics in Plato's work in the 4th Century BC. This second part looks at the development of the concept, notably in the writings of Soranus of Ephesus in Rome in the 1st century AD and Charles-Augustin Vandermonde, a French doctor of the 18th Century, before it was described and named by Francis Galton in 1883. We will be reminded that these three separate glimpses into the prehistory of Eugenics do not demonstrate a logically linked continuum, but do show a long-standing preoccupation with controlling life.

Cannabis has a long story, the story of an endless return through ages and countries, all over the world. There is no mention of an "hedonist" use of cannabis in Ancient Greek or Roman sources but cannabism is largely attested in Orient as early as in the Middle Ages, even if many tales about Haschishins and Crusaders remain highly controversial. The "come back" of cannabism can be traced back in Europe at the end of XVIIIth century after the Egyptian campaigns of Bonaparte. Thus was launched an increasing vogue of orientalism, soonly after followed by the emergence of cannabism in Paris or London and, half a century later, the United States. After a brief armistice, cannabis rises up again with force at the end of XXth century, all over the world. In our times cannabis remains in the centre of all discussions about hallucinogen substances and many ethical, moral or medical questions are still unanswered. Our final comments will go to the everlasting "come back" of cannabism: search of exotism, attempt to escape from reality or as suggested by recent physiologic studies, close inter-relations between sensorial paths and the upper brainstem centers.

Reading literary, medical and juridical texts, the author tries to understand what was the meaning of the handicap or monstrum in Roman times. She insists on the evolution of the concept and scrutinizes the case of emperor Claudius. For a real understanding of the problems, a cross-examination of texts, images and bones is necessary, she concludes.

The evolution of the status of dwarfs in the Hellenistic and Roman period is witnessed by a number of evidence, mainly iconographic. This paper revisits extant representations at the light of ancient medical texts and physiognomics. Most objects relate short-statured people with the world of entertainement (musicians, athletes) and reveal their continuing function as good-luck bringers.

Two papyri are very interesting for Medicine history of the Antiquity. The first one (a Greek papyrus prolifically illustrated between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D.) reveals the value of the illustrators of works in the Greek and Roman period and the second (the famous papyrus of Milan 300 B.C.) includes a part about the epigrams of curing.

The paper provides new information on the most famous centre of rational medicine in the Graeco-Roman world and its influence in Egypt. It uses at its point of departure a remarkable but insufficiently known documentation: Greek literary papyri (from IV/III B.C. to A.D. VI/VII), which often are unique witnesses to lost medical works, bearing testimony to original theories, practices and vocabulary.

Rediscovered during the Renaissance, Celsus' work (1st Century AD) is the first latin encyclopaedia. We only have his medical works, and we are indebted to him for his classification of diseases according to treatment: by diet, by drugs and manually, that is by surgery. Although surgery was described in Hippocrate's works, Celsus gave the first latin presentation, outlining, general and localised operations, in the VIIth book of De Medicina. The VIIIth book is devoted to orthopaedic operations which are sometimes quite different from Hippocrate's descriptions. For the first time, he describes many surgical instruments, most of which have been found by archaeologists. Finally, ethical considerations widen the epistemological field of surgery and separate it as autonomous specialty.

In reference to the presence of a list of abortifacients in a Greek manual of therapeutics or Arab origins (the Ephodia), the author reexamines the Oath of Hippocrates and its statement on abortion and abortifacients in the Hippocratic tradition as they were employed in Greek, Roman, Arab, and Byzantine cultures.

The word "limophōros", a hapax legomenon appearing in Polybius' Histories, does not mean scurvy, but rather scabies. Polybius created the word to describe an illness he believed was derived from a nutritional deficit, but can really only be seen as an attempt to describe an illness the etiology of which he was wholly unfamiliar.

Paleopathological data support the hypothesis that malaria recrudescences in Greece occurred at the Mesolithic, at the top of the classic period and at the beginning of the Turkish conquest. Malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum did not appear until the 5th century B.C.