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Plague at Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

P. Salway and
W. Dell
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Extract

The recent revival of interest in the Athenian Plague suggested to us that it would be worth while re-examining the evidence. The very fact that it has troubled so many scholars in the last hundred years lends it a certain distinction, but their conclusions are so contradictory and unsatisfactory that many have agreed with Poppo ‘eam rem diiudicare non grammaticorum atque interpretum est, sed medicorum’. Yet it is clear that the inquiry can hardly be effective without co-operation between classical and medical men.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , June 1955, pp. 62 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1955

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References

page 62 note 1 Page, D. L., ‘Thucydides’ Description of the Great Plague at Athens', Classical Quarterly, N.S. iii (1953), 97–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shrewsbury, J. F. D., ‘The Plague of Athens’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, xxiv (1950), i. 1–25Google Scholar. We are indebted to Prof. Page for allowing us to read his paper in manuscript and for much help and encouragement, and to Mr. G. T. Griffith for the second reference.

page 62 note 2 ii. 48 ff.

page 62 note 3 ii. 48. 3.

page 62 note 4 Ibid.

page 63 note 1 vi. 1209.

page 63 note 2 ii. 49. 8.

page 63 note 3 Bailey, Cyril, Titi Lucreti Cart De Rerum Natura (Oxford, 1947), iii. 1734.Google Scholar

page 63 note 4 Op. cit. iii. 1759.

page 63 note 5 ii. 51. 4.

page 63 note 6 The fact that he also adds symptoms not in Thucydides is more likely due to poetic licence than independent sources.

page 65 note 1 Osler, W. and McCrae, T., A System of Medicine (1915), i. 907Google Scholar; Monro, T. K., Manual of Medicine (1925), 58Google Scholar; Dieulafoy, G., trans. Collins, V. E. and Liebmann, J. A., A Textbook of Medicine (1910), ii. 1606.Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 Schomberg, J. F. and Kolmer, J. A., Acute Infectious Diseases (2nd ed., 1928), 583.Google Scholar

page 65 note 3 ii. 51. 6.

page 65 note 4 ii. 51. 4.

page 65 note 5 ii. 48. 2.

page 65 note 6 Ibid.

page 66 note 1 Zimmern, A., The Greek Commonwealth, 5th ed. (Oxford, 1931), 54.Google Scholar

page 66 note 2 vii. 27. 4.

page 66 note 3 vi. 22.

page 67 note 1 ii. 57. 1.

page 67 note 2 ii. 58. 2.

page 67 note 3 Barger, G., Ergot and Ergotism (1931), 112 ff.Google Scholar; Creighton, C., A History of Epidemics in Britain (1891), 58.Google Scholar

page 67 note 4 Gabbai, H.,—.Lisbonne, , and Pourquuier, H., ‘Ergot Poisoning at Pont Saint-Esprit’, British Medical Journal, 15 09 1951, 650–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Over 200 inhabitants, out of 4,000, were attacked (B.M.F., 8 09 1951, 596).Google Scholar

page 68 note 1 British Pharmaceutical Codex (1949), 325, s.v. ‘Ergota’.Google Scholar

page 68 note 2 Finley, J. H., Thucydides (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), 158, note 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar