Aretaeus of Cappadocia

Aretaeus ( Aretaeus ) (* 80 or 81 in Cappadocia in Asia Minor; † 130-138 in Alexandria, Egypt ) was a Greek physician in ancient times.

Life and work

He lived towards the end of the reign of Emperor Hadrian ( 117-138 ) in Alexandria. The doctrine of the Greek physician Hippocrates ( 460-370 BC) related parties, he wrote a two-volume compendium of healing illness with exemplary descriptions, among other things, pharyngeal diphtheria, leprosy, pulmonary tuberculosis, celiac disease and tetanus.

Aretaeus is attributed to the pneumatics. These were followers of a medical direction of antiquity, who saw in the breath (Greek pneuma = breath, breath ) the life principle. Aretaios imitates his idol Hippocrates, by using the Ionic dialect anachronistically in his medical writings, which were characterized both easily accessible to his contemporaries than they are for today's scientists also.

While a number of works ( including surgery) was lost, eight books on acute and chronic diseases with a detailed discussion of etiology, ie the totality of the factors that have led to a pre-existing disease, its characteristics and therapy as well as epilepsy, get mania and diabetes mellitus remained. In them, an unusual for this time of compassion for the sick is clear.

His account of diseases was still in the early 19th century as exemplary.

Editions and translations

• Aretaeus edidit Carolus Hude. Leipzig / Berlin 1923 ( Corpus medicorum Graecorum 2)
• A. Mann ( translator's ): The come down to us writings of Aretaeus Kappadociers, Halle 1858
• Jutta Kollesch and Diethard Nickel, Ancient Healing Art -. Selected texts, 1994 Philipp Reclam jun, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-15-009305-4