Overview

This innovative and wide-ranging volume is the first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity. It examines the conception of the body and bodily processes in mechanical terms in ancient medical writings, and looks into how artificial bodies and automata were equally configured in human terms; it also investigates how this knowledge applied to the treatment of the disabled and the diseased in the ancient world. The volume examines the pre-history of what develops, at a later stage, and more specifically during the early modern period, into the full science of iatromechanics in the context of which the human body was treated as a machine and medical treatments were devised accordingly. The volume facilitates future dialogue between scholars working on different areas, from classics, history and archaeology to history of science, philosophy and technology.

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9781316514665

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Reviews

'... an interesting and important collection of twelve essays that trace the development of explanations of the human body that appeal to machines and other technological artefacts.' Douglas R. Campbell, Metascience '... the expansive topical range and quality of scholarship ensures that this volume will be of interest to scholars of many kinds, both those interested in narrow excavation and close reading of classical sources and those interested in broader conceptual questions about technology, humanity, and the future of both.' Philip D. Bunn, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Author Information

MARIA GEROLEMOU is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard. She has published widely on ancient Greek drama, specifically on gender and madness, on Wunderkultur and on ancient science and technology. She is the author of Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity (2023). GEORGE KAZANTZIDIS is an Assistant Professor of Latin Literature in the Department of Philology at the University of Patras. He is particularly interested in the history of mental illness and the history of emotions in antiquity. His book Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in De rerum natura was published in 2021. He is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled: Greek and Roman Wonders: Medicine, Horror, the Sublime.

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