ABSTRACT
To devote a chapter to the history of medicine in the Hellenistic Greek world, apart from anatomy and the coming of Greek medicine to Rome, might be thought unduly quixotic. Few original treatises survive, a situation characteristic of Greek literature of this period in general. The very success of Hellenistic scholars in commending as models the writings of earlier Greek historians, poets and orators militated against their own survival. Although many details are inevitably gone beyond recovery, new trends, new developments and new opportunities can be discerned, without which the history of later Graeco-Roman medicine cannot properly be understood. Another area of medicine where major developments can be discerned only dimly was surgery. The anatomical discoveries of Herophilus and Erasistratus led to new techniques and new instruments, and Alexandrian surgeons in particular gained a great reputation for their work in dealing with fractures and dislocations.
