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Övervikt hos romerska kvinnor - synen på övervikt i antik och modern medicin

Magnusson, Marie LU (2014) AKSK04 20132
Classical archaeology and ancient history
Abstract (Swedish)
This essay is written because I would like to find out what the doctors in ancient Rome thought about overweight women. The reason why it is written is due to the fact that modern medicine associates many diseases with overweight, and because I myself happen to be overweight. I will do a comparison between modern medicine and the ancient medical writers to see if they did associate overweight with a number of health problems as we do today. The ancient medical writers I have chosen are the Hippocratic corpus, Soranos, Celsus and Galenos. The questions for this essay are: What medical conditions, in women, did the ancient doctors consider that overweight could cause? What medical conditions in women does modern medicine consider overweight... (More)
This essay is written because I would like to find out what the doctors in ancient Rome thought about overweight women. The reason why it is written is due to the fact that modern medicine associates many diseases with overweight, and because I myself happen to be overweight. I will do a comparison between modern medicine and the ancient medical writers to see if they did associate overweight with a number of health problems as we do today. The ancient medical writers I have chosen are the Hippocratic corpus, Soranos, Celsus and Galenos. The questions for this essay are: What medical conditions, in women, did the ancient doctors consider that overweight could cause? What medical conditions in women does modern medicine consider overweight to be a cause of? Does overweight in women, from a medical point of view, always mean something negative?
First I will see what the ancient medical texts and modern medicine says about overweight, separately, and then in the discussion I will see if the ancient doctors did associate overweight with the same diseases as we do today, and where the ancient doctors had their focus when it came to women who were overweight. As I have seen the ancient doctors did not focus a lot on overweight and neither did they focus a lot on women as the main patients in their writings were male. Although when it comes to the matter of fertility they give more attention to women and also, but still not all that much, overweight. But in some cases they think the same as we do today, for example that overweight can make a woman less fertile. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Magnusson, Marie LU
supervisor
organization
course
AKSK04 20132
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
Overweight, Women, Ancient Rome, Celsus, Hippocrates, Soranos, Galenos
language
Swedish
id
4285329
date added to LUP
2014-03-10 08:43:27
date last changed
2014-03-10 08:43:27
@misc{4285329,
  abstract     = {{This essay is written because I would like to find out what the doctors in ancient Rome thought about overweight women. The reason why it is written is due to the fact that modern medicine associates many diseases with overweight, and because I myself happen to be overweight. I will do a comparison between modern medicine and the ancient medical writers to see if they did associate overweight with a number of health problems as we do today. The ancient medical writers I have chosen are the Hippocratic corpus, Soranos, Celsus and Galenos. The questions for this essay are: What medical conditions, in women, did the ancient doctors consider that overweight could cause? What medical conditions in women does modern medicine consider overweight to be a cause of? Does overweight in women, from a medical point of view, always mean something negative? 
 First I will see what the ancient medical texts and modern medicine says about overweight, separately, and then in the discussion I will see if the ancient doctors did associate overweight with the same diseases as we do today, and where the ancient doctors had their focus when it came to women who were overweight. As I have seen the ancient doctors did not focus a lot on overweight and neither did they focus a lot on women as the main patients in their writings were male. Although when it comes to the matter of fertility they give more attention to women and also, but still not all that much, overweight. But in some cases they think the same as we do today, for example that overweight can make a woman less fertile.}},
  author       = {{Magnusson, Marie}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Övervikt hos romerska kvinnor - synen på övervikt i antik och modern medicin}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}