Role Of The Healer And Payment In Ancient Times Essays - Medicine

Role Of The Healer And ?Payment? In Ancient Times The Role of The Healer and Payment in Ancient Times It is evident through ancient writings that forms of healing were present as far back as is recorded. Medicine, healers and forms of payment seem to have played an important role in the past, like they do now. However, over the centuries changes have taken place. From the time of Galen in ancient Rome to the 14th and 15th centuries in England the relationships between doctors and patients have evolved, along with the way medicine is defined and practiced. Specifically I would like to focus on forms of payment and their effect on the doctor-patient relationship and how payment and the practice of medicine have changed over time. These changes led to a healer-patient relationship that was not as personal as it was in the time of Galen. Instead of the healer playing the role of a friend helping his neighbor, we find that being a doctor became a form of trade and the doctor started selling his services for money. The relationship between a doctor and his patient is a theme that is present in many of the writings we have from ancient times. There was a personal knowledge of the patient and an ongoing relationship with them that most doctors nowadays do not have with their own patients. Patients in our day and age walk in to a doctors office and wait for a long period of time, and then see a doctor for a few minutes. In the ancient world the healer would actually come to the house and perform services for the patient there (Prognosis, 170). Healers have always tried to provide an explanation to their patient while treating their illness. However, in the time of antiquity the shared closeness of patient and healer gave the patient an added assurance that their trusted friend or neighbor had their best interests in mind. There is also evidence of this type of relationship in the Hippocratic society. The writings of Galen describe how he was treated Eudemus, a neighbor of his, and how he came to visit him every night (Galen, 77-79). Galen was with this man through every step of his illness. One interesting thing is the way the man sits and waits for Galen every night. After Galen takes his pulse, Eudemus hangs on Galens every word and feels better after he has talked to him. This shows again the close relationship between healer and patient and how Galens presence and prognosis gave him peace of mind, which promotes healing. Other writings, such as Epidemics, Book 1 in which there are day-by-day accounts of each patients condition also give us a sense of the doctors intimate knowledge of the person they are treating (Epidemics, 44-45). These doctors recorded every detail of sickness and any and all symptoms that the patient reported to them. These doctors wanted to try their hardest to heal their pati ents or if nothing else try to tell them when they would die. It appears that healers took better care of each individual and focused more of their time on each sick person. I have mentioned that the relationship between healers and patients in ancient times was different and therefore payment in ancient times was also different. Many times, healers in ancient Rome were not paid at all, or if they were paid, payment was usually not in the form of money. Vivian Nutton says in his article that, A doctor was a person, male or female, who carried out medical treatment for a fee, or who, like Galen, devoted much of his time to healing, even if he never actually made any monetary charge but merely received presents (32). This proves that many times doctors did not heal for the money but to learn and to heal for the satisfaction of helping others. Galen himself does not specifically mention payment but there was for him the satisfaction of knowing that he had cured Eudemus and had predicted what happened to him better than all the other doctors. By doing this he became better known in his practice. Being well known was important because as Vivian Nutton