Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies A Capite ad Calcem

Front Cover
Christian Laes, Chris Goodey, M. Lynn Rose
BRILL, May 30, 2013 - Medical - 332 pages
This is the first volume ever to systematically study the subject of disabilities in the Roman world. The contributors examine the topic a capite ad calcem, from head to toe. Chapters deal with mental and intellectual disability, alcoholism, visual impairment, speech disorders, hermaphroditism, monstrous births, mobility problems, osteology and visual representations of disparate bodies. The authors fully engage with literary, papyrological, and epigraphical sources, while iconography and osteo-archaeology are taken into account. Also the late ancient evidence is taken into account. Refraining from a radical constructionist standpoint, the contributors acknowledge the possibility of discovering significant differences in the way impairment was culturally viewed or assessed.
 

Contents

A Guide
17
Psychiatric Disability in the Galenic Medical Matrix
45
Two Historical Case Histories of Acute Alcoholism in the Roman
73
Exploring Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome
89
Silent History? Speech Impairment in Roman Antiquity
145
The Case
181
Whats in a Monster? Pliny the Elder Teratology and Bodily Disability
211
A King Walking with Pain? On the Textual and Iconographical
231
Disparate Lives or Disparate Deaths? PostMortem Treatment of
249
The Function of Caricature
275
Index Locorum
299
General Index
314
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