disease
disease,the main cause of death in antiquity, is a topic for which there are more sources than for most aspects of life in the ancient world, thanks principally to the Hippocratic corpus (see medicine, §4), Aretaeus of Cappadocia, and the numerous works of his contemporary, Galen of Pergamum (2nd cent. ad). Additional information may be obtained from palaeopathology, the study of diseases found in human skeletal remains. Ancient medical literature concentrates on chronic and endemic diseases, rather than the major epidemic diseases. In fact the Greek word epidēmios, in a medical context, means ‘endemic’ rather than ‘epidemic’.
Malaria and tuberculosis are the most prominent diseases in ancient literature. Malaria occurred in antiquity in three forms, vivax, the commonest, falciparum, the most dangerous, and quartan. All three produce fevers recurring every two or three days which were noticed easily, if not...
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