Middle Ages (5th-15th Century)

These links are to significant psychological literature that is found on the World Wide Web. They are presented along with my comments and reference to art, politics, and music of the period because I am interested in presenting a cultural context within which psychology developed.

Over the past few years, this column has reviewed some noteworthy contemporary historical ophthalmic books. Publishing these books does not yield great financial reward since the market for them is limited. The publishers who take on these tasks do so primarily as a labor of love.
One of these publishers is Jean Paul Wayenborgh, whose publications are extremely well-done and whose love for ophthalmic history is evident in his personal life story.
Born in France and raised in Belgium, he learned the antiquarian book business in Germany as a teen-ager. Early on, he discovered his love for ophthalmic books and in 1961 he started his own antique business. He has never looked back.

ca. 2700 B.C. - Shen Nung originates acupuncture
ca. 1700 B.C. - Edwin Smith surgical papyrus written. First written record about the nervous system
ca. 500 B.C. - Alcmaion of Crotona dissects sensory nerves
ca. 500 B.C. - Alcmaion of Crotona describes the optic nerve

Welcome to the Asclepion, a World Wide Web page devoted to the study of ancient medicine. This page was designed to be an internet source that presents the study of ancient medicine in a manner that is both accessible and useful to the general public and to students in the history of medicine courses at Indiana University Bloomington. Please feel free to browse and send comments or ask questions.

This is a brief "SYNOPSIS" of the History of Islamic Medicine. We are in the process of putting an in depth study of the "History of Islamic Medicine" on this page which will include biographies of some of the most prominent Islamic Physicians in history. Please keep a look out for this in the future. In the interim if you are interested email to:"hnagamia@pol.net

Although the Greeks created rational medicine, their work was not always or even fully scientific in the modern sense of the term. Like other Greek pioneers of science, the doctors were prone to think that much more could be discovered by mere reflection and argument than by practice and experiment. For in their time there was not yet a distinction between philosophy and science, including medicine. Hippocrates was the first to separate medicine from philosophy and disprove the idea that disease was a punishment for sin. Much of the traditional treatment for injuries and ailments practiced by the Greeks stemmed from folk medicine, a characteristic shared by the Greeks with other societies to this day.

The Disability History Project is a community history project and we welcome your participation. This is an opportunity for disabled people to reclaim our history and determine how we want to define ourselves and our struggles. People with disabilities have an exciting and rich history that should be shared with the world. Please email us about anything that you would like to see become part of the Disability Social History Project, including your disabled heroes, important events in disability history, and resources.

The Time and Frequency Division, part of NIST's Physics Laboratory, maintains the standard for frequency and time interval for the United States, provides official time to the United States, and carries out a broad program of research and service activities in time and frequency metrology.

In classical Greece and Rome, only alcohol, the oldest documented compound of abuse, poses a significant problem. Opium is widely employed only as a medicine; great caution is advised in its use, it is seldom used alone, and the phenomena of dependence and abuse are not recorded. While cannabis use is widespread in Asia Minor and Assyria, there appears to be little use of cannabis in Greek and Roman cultures.