This week I read up on Roman medicine and Roman contributions to medicine. The Romans started learning about medicine from the Greeks and from previous Greek works, and in fact, most “Roman” doctors of medicine were Greek or of Greek origin. Central beliefs they inherited from the Greeks included belief in the 4 basic humors and bloodletting as a way of curing illnesses. The most famous Roman medical practitioner was Galen. He wrote many works on medicine, and his most famous was to become a textbook on medicine for the next thousand years and more in Europe.

Much of his work was translated, expounded upon, ordered, and commentated by Arab and Muslim. They placed great emphasis upon his work and the works we now have in English and other Western languages have been all translated from the Arabic translations of Galen’s work. Some works are still only in Arabic, and only a few remain in their original Latin. A new idea was brought by the Muslim and Arab physicans and philosophers who learned from and expanded Galen’s works-experimientation. Through this, they found new results, some of which confirmed Galen’s ideas and the Greeks, and some which contridicted them, such as Galen’s theory of humorism and Galen’s theory on how the heart worked.

Things to work on this week include learning my hic, haec, hoc down pat

This week I read the famous Winnie ille Pu, the Latin version of Winnie the Pooh. This version was published almost a quarter century after the original. It was and is the only Latin book to ever become a New York Times best-seller. It was published in December 1960, and remained on the best-sellers list for 20 weeks and sold 125,000 copies in 21 printings according to Edwin McDowell of the New York Times. Even the Christian Science Monitor said:

”Even Caesar never took a country as large as America in two months’ time.”

The Chicago Tribune declared

”it does more to attract interest in Latin than Cicero, Caesar and Virgil combined.”

It was so popular that within days, Scribner Book Store which was selling the book, posted a sign outside their door that read:

”Editione omne vendita non restant exempla libri de Winnie Ille Pu (latine).”

The publisher of the book,  E. P. Dutton, ran an ad with a picture of Winne ille Pu dressed as a Roman centurion soldier that read:

”Mea Apologia Winnie Ille Pu.”

I think the most interesting thing, however, about this book was the story of it’s translator, a one Dr. Alexander Lenard. He spoke 12 languages, and moved to Brazil in 1952 as a refugee with his wife from Hungary, but fortune was not kind to him. His doctoral degree was not recognized in Brazil, and he worked as a nurse in a lead mine, a pharmacist and a translator at medical congresses. He spent 7 years writing the book, even though the book was a short children’s book. The reason is because his version of the book is full of alliterations, puns and rhymes from classical Latin and Roman history, a much more satisfying read than the original in my humble opinion.

For things to work on, I think the most important thing to for me to do is post my responses in a more timely manner to the online blog, and I will do so when I finish transcribing the last few entries left in my physical journal.

For this week’s Latin language work, I read about different Graeco-Roman philosophers and their ideas. I focused on 2 main philosophies in particular; Epicureanism and Stoicism.

Epicureanism was founded by the philosopher Epicurus in 307 BC. He was an atomic materialist, so he he was an atheist who believed in the atomic model of the philosopher Democritus and denied the idea of the traditional 4 basic Greek elements. Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, because it says the ultimate goal in life is pleasure, yet it is not hedonistic in the way we usually think. To reach ultimate pleasure, it calls for an absence of pain and a simple life.

Stoicism on the other hand, has been the foremost opponent of Epicureanism throughtout history. Founded by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC, it called for no emotion, and to reach perfection, one had to be a sage and display no emotions, as they would only adversely affect judgement. It was very popular in the Roman and Greek world, its most famous patron and practicer being the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

I think my biggest weakness this week was that I didn’t do one assignment on time for Latin class.

For this week’s Latin language work, I read up on the work The Annals by the Roman historian Tacitus. On background information, Tacitus was a Roman historian and Senator who’s two greatest works were the Annals and the Histories. Tacitus’ father-in-law was the great governor Agricola of Britain. Tacitus himself was born to a noble family of knights in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire during the Silver and Golden Ages of Roman literature.

The book the Annals is about Roman history from the year Augustus Caesar died in 14 to….It has the name Annals because it deals with everything on a year-to-year basis, although experts think that he probably didn’t name it that. As with most ancient writing, some of it is missing. I didn’t finish it, but I did read a majority of the writing and found it very interesting what topics Tacitus found interesting in the book.

I think my biggest weakness this week was that I didn’t practice my verbs to such a degree of perfection as I would have liked. Hopefully I’ll do this in the coming week.