Are ancient diseases mirrors of today's diseases?
And how can they be reconstructed without anachronism? These are the questions that guided the international seminar in Medical Humanities organized by the IHM (Institute of Humanities in Medicine) at Lausanne on December 18, 2024, in which Myriam (biologist), a postdoctoral researcher in our ArchiMed project, participated alongside Pierre-Olivier Méthot (philosopher, Laval University, Quebec) and Guillaume Linte (historian, University of Lausanne). The stakes are high in the digital age, where preserving the past clashes with the construction of a computerized future. The text below summarizes the key points discussed during the presentations and exchanges between the participants and the audience.
Some elementary definitions are first provided by Pierre-Olivier, who enlightens the research projects in the sciences and history of the following speakers, sharing the common historiographical challenge.
Mirko D. Grmek, a physician and historian, is cited for having developed the concept of pathocenosis, referring to the state of equilibrium of diseases at a given time and in a given society: the presence and significance of one disease depend on the presence of others (Further reading: "Les maladies à l’aube de la civilisation occidentale" [Diseases at the Dawn of Western Civilization]). Thus, is the plague of Athens, described during ancient Greece, the same disease as the plague known today ?
Retrospective diagnosis is defined as a set of practices aimed at identifying and characterizing diseases in the past based on written and unwritten sources.
Emile Littré was one of the first historians to theorize this concept in the 19th century, clarifying what should and should not be done in this ancient medical exercise. Charles Daremberg institutionalized the practice. More recently, Piers D. Mitchell (physician, historian) published on the risks associated with interpreting ancient written texts and explored the question of the relevance of modern biological diagnoses for past pathological events (Retrospective diagnosis and the use of historical texts for investigating disease in the past, International Journal of Paleopathology, 2011). Finally, anachronism—looking at the past through the eyes of the present—is one of the major risks in retrospective diagnosis, that is, correcting perceptions of the past with our current knowledge.
Myriam and Guillaume then present their respective research projects, putting into practice the concepts defined earlier around retrospective diagnosis and considering today's diseases in the past. The common conclusion is the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach, with the historian's analysis depending on the biologist’s expertise, and vice versa. This is what is being implemented within ArchiMed.
We thank Aude Fauvel for initiating this seminar and Vincent Varlet for moderating the debate.
Photo credit: Examination of the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II at the Musée de l'Homme, Paris, November 11, 1976 (Tomy Comiti)
14 Jan 2025
