#hippocrates

[tr: art takes long, life is short]

Today we're looking at a 14th century manuscript, a copy of a purported letter from Hippocrates to Caesar. The text is a short collection of medical advice in prose, comprised of recipes followed by a guide to astronomical movements. It's written in Middle French! (UPenn Ms. Codex 421)

🔗:

Some screenshots from the video that break the most stereotypes about the Byzantines, namely the one according to which they ignored their ancient Greek culture.

For example, the three figures in front of the black background are "Hellen Aristotle", "Hellen Plutarch", and "Hellen Aeschylus" (ΕΛΛΗΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΗΣ, ΕΛΛΗΝ ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΣ, ΕΛΛΗΝ ΑΙΣΧΥΛΟΣ)

This is from On The Sacred Disease, a Hippocratic text about epilepsy. He's arguing that epilepsy comes from the brain, that the brain is the seat of consciousness, that people can tell when an epileptic attack is coming on and the things they do in the prodrome are because they are scared and ashamed (not because they're Seeing Demons), and that epilepsy is not a curse from the gods, but is rather a natural disease that can be treated like any other disease.

And I'm just. I'm literally getting teary-eyed about the hope and righteous anger in that last paragraph. I want to go back in time and find this doctor and Dr.-Who-Van-Gogh him to a pediatric epilepsy clinic

And let him listen to the doctors explaining to the little kids (and their parents) what's going on, and how they're going to help them

And just tell him, you were right. You were as right as you could possibly be. The brain is a million times more complicated than anyone in your day could ever imagine, no one in our day really understands it either, but you were right.

it was a disease and it was in the brain and you put us on the road that helped us figure out how to treat it. it took us 2000 years because it was way more complicated than anyone thought, but we did it.

@post-troy-stress-disorder finallyyyyy

rlly sorry it took so long lol but i finally have a finished piece for these freaks

It's that time of the year when I get oc brainrot