Aretaeus of Cappadocia was an ancient Greek physician. He is considered as one of the greatest medical scholars of Greco-Roman antiquity after Hippocrates. He was best known for his general treatise on diseases which explained with great accuracy the detail of symptoms and the diagnostic character of diseases. A master clinician, Aretaeus accurately linked diabetes with the copious production of urine and described the symptoms of asthma.
Background
Aretaeus was a native of Cappadocia, now in southern Turkey. He is believed was born between the time of Cornelius Celsus (30 B.C. - 30 A.D.) and Galen of Pergamon (131 - c. 200 A.D.), and to have lived in the first century A.D., but he was never referred to by other medical writers of the time, and no biographical details are available.
Education
It is also generally believed that Aretaeus studied in Alexandria and spent some time in Egypt, then practiced medicine in Rome.
Career
Aretaeus is known for his text on the causes, symptoms, and treatment of acute and chronic diseases. The dates of this physician, who was rarely cited in antiquity, have long been a matter of dispute, but it should now be clear that Aretaeus belongs to the middle of the first century and that he was a contemporary of the famous pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides, who cites him once. Further, since Aretaeus probably knew Andromachos, Nero’s personal physician (to whom Dioscorides dedicated his work), we may conclude that at some time he had resided in Rome. Nothing more is known about his life.
In terms of his medical approach, in principle Aretaeus adhered to the Pneumatic School which held that health depended on bodily eukrasia, a harmonious balance between the basic elements (hot, cold, wet, and dry), and pneuma (refined airy element or spirit), a vital power which bound the elements. Although the Doctrine of Pneuma goes back to Hippocrates, it did not become the basis of a school until Athenaeus of Sicily founded one in the first century AD.
After his death he was entirely forgotten until 1554, when two of his manuscripts, On the Causes and Indications of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.) and On the Treatment of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.), both written in the Ionic Greek dialect, were discovered.
Views
Aretaeus belonged to the so-called Pneumatic school of physicians, which had been founded in the first century B.C. by Athenaeus of Attalia, who had studied under the Stoic Posidonius. Since Aretaeus is the only one of the Pneumatic school whose work has come down to us intact, he is a valuable source in several respects: (1) One can trace in his work several specific influences of the Stoic-Posidonian ideas and influences in medicine (for instance, the idea of the soul’s ability to predict). (2) Aretaeus’ position on the physician’s compassion for the patient, for instance, reveals that the Pneumatics took a position close to that of the early Christians, and thus forms an important link between medicine and early Christianity (which actually was not very affable to medicine). (3) Aretaeus reveals that the “orthodox” Pneumatic school of the first century led to a strong revival of the doctrine of Hippocrates as well as of the Ionic dialect within medical literature. Since Aretaeus also used Homeric words and modes of expression, he represents an important example of the Greek style of prose in imperial times, especially that of the so-called second sophistic.
In terms of curing of diabetes he believed that the thirst should be reduced by strengthening the stomach, “which is the fountain of thirst”. “When therefore you have purged with the hiera”, he continues, “use as epithemes the nard, mastic, dates and raw quinces...” and so forth. Drinking water should be boiled with autumn fruit, and the food is to be milk with cereals, starch, groats and gruel; dry wines are recommended.
Quotations:
"The disease appears to me to have got the name of diabetes, as if from the Greek word διαβητης (which signifies a siphon) because the fluid does not remain in the body, but uses the man’s body as a ladder (διαβαθρη) whereby to leave it”.
Of chronic disease he wrote:
“Hence, indeed, is developed the talent of the medical man, his perseverance, his skill in diversifying the treatment, and conceding such pleasant things as will do no harm, and in giving encouragement. But the patient also ought to be courageous and co-operate with the physician against the disease.”