An intriguing fragment of pre-hippocratic medicine in Aeschylus.

Abstract

Information scattered in several passages of Greek tragedies of the 5th century BC contributes to our knowledge of pre-Hippocratic medicine and throws light on the cultural background of the Hippocratic writers. In this regard, the work of Aeschylus is noteworthy, because it contains fragments of an ideal-conjectural conception preceding the empirical approach based on observation and experience. The idealized meaning attributed to the term muupsilonepsilonlambdaóç (marrow), compared with both Homeric epics and Hippocratic writings, represents a reliable index of the evolution of the ancient medical thought.