Aretaeus of Cappadocia

Aretaeus of Cappadocia
Born	Ἀρεταῖος
Nationality	Greek
Occupation	Physician
Years active	1st century CE
Known for	General treatise on diseases

Aretaeus (Greek: Ἀρεταῖος) is one of the most celebrated of the ancient Greek physicians, of whose life, however, few particulars are known. He presumably was a native or at least a citizen of Cappadocia, a Roman province in Asia Minor (Turkey), and most likely lived around first century CE. He is generally styled "the Cappadocian" (Καππάδοξ).

Aretaeus wrote in Ionic Greek a general treatise on diseases, which is still extant. The valuable book displays great accuracy in the detail of symptoms, and in seizing the diagnostic character of diseases. In his practice he followed for the most part the method of Hippocrates, but he paid less attention to what have been styled "the natural actions" of the system; and, contrary to the practice of the Father of Medicine, he did not hesitate to attempt to counteract them, when they appeared to him to be injurious.

Aretaeus offered clinical descriptions of a number of diseases among which he gave classic accounts of asthma, epilepsy, pneumonia, tetanus, uterus cancer and different kinds of insanity. He differentiated nervous diseases and mental disorders and described hysteria, headaches, mania and melancholia.

The account which he gives of his treatment of various diseases indicates a simple and sagacious system, and one of more energy than that of the professed Methodici. Thus he freely administered active purgatives; he did not object to narcotics; he was much less averse to bleeding; and upon the whole his Materia Medica was both ample and efficient.

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