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I. The State Health Service in Ancient Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

A. G. Woodhead
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Extract

A State Health Service is not as new an institution as is generally supposed. It existed in the ancient world in Greek lands, and, perhaps in imitation, in the Roman West. While, of course, it cannot be said that the National Health Service of twentieth-century Britain was inspired by the practice of antiquity (which, indeed, was probably unknown to those who created it), the modern scheme constitutes a return to a view of the State which obtained in ancient times. The beneficent activity of the Church and then of privately supported hospitals mitigated the results of the disappearance of the ancient Welfare State. The evidence, scanty as it is, for the Health Service among the Greeks throws light on their attitude towards the proper function of the State as well as on their great appreciation of the skill and activity of the medical profession.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , 1952 , pp. 235 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1952

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References

1 Vercoutre, A., Rev[ue] Arch[éologique], 11e Série, xxxix (1880), pp. 99–110Google Scholar, 231–46, 309–21, 348–62. Pohl, R., De Graecorum Medicis Publicis (Berlin, 1905)Google Scholar. Oehler, J., ‘Epigraphische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Aerztestandes’, Janus, xiv (1908), pp. 4–20Google Scholar, 111–23. Jacob, O., ‘Les Cités Grecques'et les Blessés de Guerre’, in Mélanges Gustave Glotz (Paris, 1932), pp. 461–81Google Scholar. Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World 11 (1941), pp. 1088–94Google Scholar. In vol. iii. PP. 1597–9, note 45. Rostovtzeff discusses the evidence briefly and gives a sample of the epigraphic material. See also SirTarn, W. and Griffith, G. T., Hellenistic Civilisatinn 3 (1952), pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

2 E. Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour throught Greece during the years 1801, 1805, and 1806, 1 p. 146, note 2.

3 See Adcock, F. E., Cambridge Historical Journal, 11 (1927), pp. 95–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 102–4.

4 Cf. I.G. I2, 374, and Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth,5 pp. 264 and 271, note 1. T. 83 shows Asclepiades of Perge as receiving a salary of 1000 drachmas from Seleuceia in Pamphylia (a small city) in the second century B.C.

5 For the iatrikon see Wilcken, U., Griechische Ostraka aus Aegypten und Nubien, I (1899), pp. 375–7Google Scholar. and K. Sudhoff, Aerztliches ausgriechischen Papyrus-Urkunden (1909), pp. 245ff. and 266ff. These and other references are given by Rostovtzeff, op. cit. III, p. 1600, note 48. For ‘specialists’, presumably working under the Health Service, see Wilcken, op. cit. p. 377 and Herodotus, 11, 84. It may be noted that the evidence for the tax of two artabai comes from military settlements in Egypt. Arrangements and scales, both elsewhere in Egypt and in other parts of the Greek world, may have varied. Furthermore, Rostovtzeff considers that there may have been some differences in the working of the scheme between Alexandria and the rest of Egypt.

6 In Hellenistic Egypt, ‘wurde man in einem fremden Ort krank, so wurde man von den dortigen Aerzten kostenfrei behandelt, da diese schon von ihrer Gemeinde unterhalten wurden’. Wilcken, op. cit. p. 376.

7 Cf. Vercoutre, loc. cit. pp. 231–40.

8 By Antoninus Pius. See Digest, XXVII, I, 6, 2ff.; W. Liebenam, Städteverwaltung in Romischen Kaiserreiche (1900), p. 80.

9 For this aspect see especially O. Jacob's article cited above (p. 235).

10 Rostovtzeff, op. cit. iii, p. 1600, note 48. For Hippiatrici in general cf. now L. Edelstein's short account in the Oxford Classical Dictionary.