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For centuries, the marine quarantine system was the major protection of the public health against serious infectious diseases around the world. The present study reconstructs the history of the Quarantine Station of Piraeus, one of the largest Mediterranean ports, known as the “Lazaretto of Saint George”, as a vital element in the maritime sanitary protection of Greece. Our research will investigate the impact left by this institution on public health, as well as on the economic life of the port of Piraeus and the adjacent capital city of Athens. With regard to the first issue, we will seek to evaluate its role in relation to major outbreaks in the capital, as well as the arrival of 1.3 million Greek refugees after the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. The opening of Suez Canal (1865) was a great challenge and the institution was problematic at administrative and sanitary levels. During 20th century, the station complied with the national public health legislation and the international sanitary conventions. Until the Second World War, the Lazaretto of Saint George played a key role in both the protection of public health in general, but also in the economic and industrial progress of Piraeus and Athens. © 2018, Croatian Scientific Society for the History of Health. All rights reserved.

In the 18th century clinical cardiology was based on pulse examination and auscultation by placing the ear directly on the patient’s chest, while diagnosis of heart diseases was done in postmortem examination. In 1749, Jean-Baptiste de Sénac, physician of King Louis XV, published his work on the heart Traité de la structure du coeur, de son action et de ses maladies. It was the result of years of anatomical and physiological study, in an attempt to illuminate heart and its functions. Sénac recognized among several heart disorders, aortic regurgitation, mitral calcification, and mitral regurgitation. His work remained a landmark in valvular pathology and cardiology until the early 19th century. © 2016 Bentham Science Publishers.

The aim of the study is to explore the medieval concepts on the voluntary death of severely sick people, as they emerge through the endura (endurance) of the heresy of the Cathars in France (twelfth to fourteenth centuries). The endura was the prerequisite act of repentance that would allow the fallen soul to return to heaven. The endura was a necessary act of repentance, after the performance of a ceremonial purification of the soul (consolamentum), and consisted of the patients’ voluntary abstention from vital food. The consolamentum and endura could be performed in the final stage of a disease with the consent of the patients or their relatives. The role of the Cathar physician was only to determine the severity of the disease and the forthcoming death of the patient. The physician was not allowed to take steps that would deprive the life of the patient, and the performance of the ritual endura was duty of the spiritual leaders of the community. The modern ethical approach to this subject is dictated by the medieval belief on the salvation of the soul and tries to answer the question of whether the endura could be seen as a medieval concept of a ritual euthanasia or fell within the theological sin of suicide. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

The iconography of the doctor saints Cosmas and Damian and the artistic representations of their miracles are important sources for the history of medicine. Within the sphere of physician-saints, Cosmas and Damian have the greatest number of iconographic depictions in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. In most of their representations, they wear long robes as a sort of professional mantles and carry surgical instruments and boxes indicating their status as doctors. The progress of Byzantine surgery could be attested by these objects, some of them mentioned in collections of miracle stories and documented in medical sources. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

In order to present the social, scientific and institutional context which permitted the use of leucotomies in Greece, we have reviewed the Archives of the Medical Associations, the medical literature of the years 1946-56, a reader’s dissertation and the memoirs of two psychiatrists. More than 250 leucotomies were done in the two public psychiatric hospitals in Athens from 1947 to 1954, as well as 40 leucotomies in the public psychiatric hospital in Thessaloniki. Although aware of the side effects, psychiatrists justified the use of the procedure. The performance of leucotomies in Greece declined because of reports of the dangers of the operation and its unpredictable outcome for the patients, but mainly because of the encouraging results with psychotropic drugs in the early 1950s.

Gonioscopy is a technique used to examine structures in the anterior chamber angle (the fluid filled space inside the eye between the iris and the innermost layer of the cornea, the endothelium). It is an essential tool in ophthalmic practice, particularly in the diagnosis of glaucoma. In 1899, the Greek ophthalmologist Alexios Trantas was the first to visualise the angle in vivo and coined the term ‘gonioscopy’. He made a number of other important contributions to ophthalmology. © 2015 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

A little-known effort to conduct biological warfare occurred during the 17th century. The incident transpired during the Venetian-Ottoman War, when the city of Candia (now Heraklion, Greece) was under siege by the Ottomans (1648-1669). The data we describe, obtained from the Archives of the Venetian State, are related to an operation organized by the Venetian Intelligence Services, which aimed at lifting the siege by infecting the Ottoman soldiers with plague by attacking them with a liquid made from the spleens and buboes of plague victims. Although the plan was perfectly organized, and the deadly mixture was ready to use, the attack was ultimately never carried out. The conception and the detailed cynical planning of the attack on Candia illustrate a dangerous way of thinking about the use of biological weapons and the absence of reservations when potential users, within their religious framework, cast their enemies as undeserving of humanitarian consideration. © 2015, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All rights reserved.

Monks in Byzantine times (330–1453 AD) often expressed their faith with extreme manifestations of behaviour, such as living on a high column (stylites), on a tree (dendrites) or in crowded urban centres of the empire pretending to be fools for Christ’s sake. These Holy Fools exposed themselves to the ridicule and the mistreatment of the citizens, being protected, however, by their state of insanity to mock and violate moral codes and social conventions. The official Church barely tolerated these religious attitudes as promoting deviations from standard orthodoxy, and the Quinisext Ecumenical Council (592 AD) judged them as dangerous and formally denounced the phenomenon. The two most famous of them in Byzantium were Symeon of Emesa and Andrew of Constantinople, whose lives constitute unique testimonies to insanity and the simulation thereof. The survival and transplantation of the Holy Fools in Russia, called “yurodivye”, where they met widespread acceptance, confirm their appeal in specific geographic areas and their endurance over time. We attempt to approach the symbolism of holy lunacy and to analyse the personality trends of these “eccentric” saints. © 2012, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Cleopatra is a female figure widespread in Greece (especially in Macedonian territory), Egypt and Syria during the Hellenistic era. Ancient women doctors bearing the name Cleopatra have been identified by a systematic search through the ancient Greek, Latin and Egyptian bibliography, including original resources from the first century BC. Fictional and non-fictional figures have been distinguished and their works identified. Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, Galen’s physician assistant, the outcast Metrodora, Cleopatra the Alchemist and Cleopatra the Gynaecologist deliver a story of medicine and name-giving that confuses researchers of the past and intrigues those of the present. © The Author(s) 2014.

Byzantine physicians (4th-7th and 8th-12th centuries A.D.), especially those interested in Surgery, developed a number of interesting concepts, views and opinions referring to the field now recognized as Oral and Cranio-maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology. Material and method: The original texts of Byzantine physicians, written in ancient Greek, and now preserved in the electronic platform Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, at the University of California, Irvine, CA, USA, were investigated in relation to Oral and Cranio-maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology. Results: The most eminent physicians of the Early (4th-7th century A.D.) and Middle (8th-12th century A.D.) Byzantine Period, in particular Oribasius Pergamenus, Aëtius Amidenus, Alexander Trallianus, Theophilus Protospatharius, Paulus Aegineta, Meletius Monachos, and Leo Medicus, in their works deal with topographic and surgical anatomy of the head and neck, and a large list of related topics, including dentoalveolar surgery, oral and cervicofacial infections, trauma of viscerocranium and neurocranium as well as the biomechanics of traumatic brain injuries, temporomandibular joints dysfunction as a consequence of mandibular dislocation, surgical oncology and reconstructive surgery of the head and neck, oral pathology, surgical pathology of salivary glands, therapeutic management of facial nerve dysfunction, preprosthetic surgery, craniofacial surgery, and deformities of the facial skeleton involving anthropologic and craniometric observations. Clinical examination of patients presenting corresponding functional and esthetic problems is considered, using recognizable orthodontic and orthognathic surgical approaches. Finally, specific bandages of the head and neck are described, for treating traumatic injuries of the viscerocranium and neurocranium, diastasis of the cranial sutures, dislocations of the mandible (unilateral and bilateral), as well as inflammatory diseases of the parotids and the neck. Conclusions: Byzantine physicians had been particularly interested in various subjects of the mouth, jaws, face, and head and neck in general, in the frame of course of their general surgery practice. © 2013 European Association for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery.

This review presents the medical and social role of British military doctors in the formation of the British sanitary campaign in the Ionian Islands during the period 1815-1864. They were the core of a health system based on the old sanitary model of the Venetian Republic, which was the former ruler of the region. The British innovation and reorganisation of the old lazarettos (a quarantine system for maritime travellers), the new marine sanitary procedures, the determination of quarantine duration for major infectious diseases along with the introduction of the vaccination system resulted in a satisfactory defence against epidemics in Greece during the 19th century. The British military physicians applied and established West European medical ideas, as well as the principles of preventive medicine, for the first time in the Greek territory and this is a historical example of a successful sanitary campaign based on the experience of military physicians and their collaboration with civilian physicians.

In this article, we present briefly the various types of conservative and surgical therapeutic approaches of varicocele. We focus on an effective non-surgical method invented and popularized by Curling, the great specialist in testicular diseases. © 2011 Springer.

The aim of our report is to present the case of the illness which probably affected Lord Byron's health for the rest of his life. We present three letters of the famous British poet and fighter of the Greek Revolution in 1821, which were sent between 25 September and 3 October 1810. These letters are associated with Byron's illness during his excursion in the ancient monuments of Peloponnese. Lord Byron describes his clinical features with an irregular fever close to malaria but the identification of Plasmodium spp is difficult. According to the environmental conditions and the endemicity of the area, the hypothesis of a mixed species malaria cannot be excluded.

After the Greek Independence (1830), the first King, Otto from the Wittelsbach dynasty (Bayer), was married to Amelia from the House of Oldenburg (1836). Their failure to produce an heir to the throne, eagerly expected by the people, contributed much to their abdication in 1862, as an additional factor at the general, opposition to their way of governing. The responsibility for the couples sterility became a matter of political controversies among their families, their countries and the other European thrones after the unsuccessful medical diagnoses and treatments of the most eminent Greek and German physicians. This paper examines their failure to continue the throne, the medical circumstances, and the historical and political consequences.

The authors attempt to solve the enigma about the possible aphasia of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425) in the 3-year period between his first and his second and fatal stroke. The texts of historians and chroniclers reveal that Manuel remained semi-paralyzed at bed and his motor disability alienated him from the state affairs and condemned him to isolation from all embassies and contact with others, except his family. Only the funeral oration of the Bishop Bessarion raises the suspicion of a speechless emperor. All testimonies referring to this infirmity are examined.

OBJECTIVES To offer historical evidence of Byzantine urology and the variety of operations or other healing techniques as applied on the selected group of the Emperors who presented with diseases of the kidney and the urinary tract. METHODS The health problems of all 87 Byzantine Emperors have been reviewed and focus has been made on the urological diseases, followed by an analysis of the diagnostic and therapeutic processes. RESULTS Byzantine medicine is the heir of the Ancient Greek and Roman scientific knowledge, enriched by the personal experience of the physicians of the era and the evolution in anatomic researches. In the field of urology, various operative techniques were applied and the surgeons attempted to cure problems of the bladder, urethra, and external genitalia, aiming to restore the health of the State leader. The healing methods applied to the urological problems of the Emperors represent the highest level of this branch of Byzantine surgery, because the best quality of surgeons performed their profession in the capital of the Empire, Constantinople, and were also responsible for the health of the Royal Family. The descriptions of all of these well-known diseases of the urological system and their therapies are contained in the extended compilations of the medical authors of the era, and historical and other nonmedical sources complete the panoramic view of Byzantine urology. CONCLUSIONS The diagnosis and the healing methods for the urological diseases of the Emperors represent the general level of Byzantine Surgery and especially of urology, as well as the anatomic knowledge of the genital and the urological systems. UROLOGY 77: 269-273, 2011. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc.

Objective - The objective of this paper was to examine the ancient and medieval concepts about the seat of the mental functions, as exposed in Greek texts from Antiquity to Byzantine times. Methods - The review of the philosophical and medical literature from the original ancient Greek language from the Homeric epics to the Holy Fathers of Christianity, as the problem of the seat of the soul remained without a certain answer through the centuries. Results - Primitive concepts attributed great significance to the soul and dictated cannibal behaviours for the possession and eating of the defeated enemy's heart. Mental functions, such as thinking, feeling and mainly those related to affective manifestations, were attributed to the heart and to some other internal organs (liver, diaphragm) from the times of Greek mythology. Philosophy and empirical medicine had underestimated the brain probably because it is a 'silent' organ, contrary to the palpitating heart, with its obvious participations in the emotional reactions. The role of the brain as the mental organ and the seat of emotions has been gradually recognized. Conclusion - The permanent question of the seat of the soul had been for many centuries a critical dispute and the contribution of Greek philosophical and medical thought was decisive for the contemporary transformation of the whole concept.

In this paper, the original Greek language texts of the Byzantine medical literature about lycanthropy are reviewed. The transformation of a human being into a wolf and the adoption of animal-like behaviour, which were already known from mythology and had been presented in the scientific works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians, were examined by six Byzantine physicians and explained as a type of melancholic depression or mania. In spite of the influence of Byzantine medicine, its rationality in the interpretation of lycanthropy was forgotten in medieval and Renaissance times when it was replaced by explanations based on demonic possession and witchcraft. More recently psychiatry has treated the phenomenon as a subject of medical inquiry and has again explained the condition in terms of mental disorder. © The Author(s), 2009.

Background: Research into the welfare institutions for the elderly, which were established in the Byzantine Empire. Objective: The purpose of the study is the research into the texts of the Byzantine chroniclers and the contemporary historical sources so as to determine the social policy of the Byzantine State regarding the homes for the aged. Methods: The histories and chronicles of the Byzantine writers, written in the original Greek language, were studied and analysed, so as to locate the extracts in the texts concerning the interest shown by the Byzantine State to establish institutions for old and ailing people. Results: The care for the elderly in Byzantium was undertaken in special infirmaries, called ‘gerocomeia’, which operated all over the empire mostly in or near the monasteries. All these nursing homes were highly esteemed and the governor of the institution seems to have been a person of high importance. The most important nursing home was located in Constantinople and was established by Emperor John II Comnenus in the 12th century in the famous monastery and hospital of the Pantocrator. Conclusion: The study and analysis of the historical texts of the Byzantine period (324-1453 AD) that human-oriented behaviour, which derived from the intervention of religion, contributed to the foundation of many welfare institutions for the elderly by the Byzantine emperors, the church and some individuals who showed great interest in them. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Objective: The aim of this article is the presentation and brief analysis of some historical cases, unknown in the broader medical bibliography, of child sexual abuse in Byzantine Society (324-1453 A.D.). Method: The original texts of the Byzantine historians, chroniclers and ecclesiastical authors, written in the Greek language, were studied in order to locate instances of child sexual abuse. Results: Although the punishment provided by the laws and the church for cases of child sexual abuse were very strict, a number of instances of rapes under cover of premature marriages, even in the imperial families, are revealed in these texts. Furthermore, cases of child prostitution, pederasty, and incest are included in the historical texts and some contemporary authors confirmed the presence of many such cases in all classes of Byzantine society. Conclusion: The research of original Byzantine literature disclosed many instances of child sexual abuse in all social classes even in the mediaeval Byzantine society which was characterized by strict legal and religious prohibitions. Copyright (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.

Our research on the texts of the Byzantine historians and chroniclers revealed an apparently curious phenomenon, namely, the abandonment of terminally ill emperors by their physicians when the latter realised that they could not offer any further treatment. This attitude tallies with the mentality of the ancient Greek physicians, who even in Hippocratic times thought the treatment and care of the terminally ill to be a challenge to nature and hubris to the gods. Nevertheless, it is a very curious attitude in the light of the concepts of the Christian Byzantine physicians who, according to the doctrines of the Christian religion, should have been imbued with the spirit of philanthropy and love for their fellowmen. The meticulous analysis of three examples of abandonment of Byzantine emperors, and especially that of Alexius I comnenus, by their physicians reveals that this custom, following ancient pagan ethics, in those time stook on a ritualised form without any significant or real content.

The most significant contribution of the great Byzantine physicians to the evolution of medicine is their effort to summarize all the medical knowledge of the Greco-Roman world, which included earlier sources in antiquity, lost forever in our days. The transition from ancient to medieval medicine included the adoption of Christian spiritual values, which took place in the early Byzantine period (4th to 7th century). In the field of nephrology, under the influence of Hippocratic and Galenic doctrines, the most prominent medical personalities, Oribasius of Pergamum, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles and Paul of Aegina, performed the role of the researcher and healer, as well as that of the encyclopedist. Their works on kidney disease are presented in this paper.