medicine
medicine1. Introductory survey
1. Western literature begins with a disease; in the first book of Homer's Iliad the god Apollo (associated with the medical arts directly or through his Asclepiad progeny; see Asclepius) sends a plague on the Greeks camped before Troy to avenge Chryses' treatment at the hands of Agamemnon. No attempt is made to treat the plague; the activity of doctors in the Homeric epics is generally limited to the treatment of wounds and injuries sustained in combat. Many later authorities (e.g. Cornelius Celsus, early 1st cent. ad) argued that this was a sign of the high moral standards which then prevailed. If disease had its own moral force in literature—note, for example, Hesiod's account of diseases escaping from Pandora's jar (Opera et Dies 69–105), the role of illness and...[The entire page is 5265 words long]
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