Roman Gladiators ate a mostly vegetarian diet and drank a tonic of ashes

Re:Roman Gladiators ate a mostly vegetarian diet and drank a... by scottlocklin on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:52PM (#8511887)

Once in a while, we find out that crazy ideas of the ancients have some basis in truth. For example, "epigenetics" is something that has been around since the ancient Greeks. Eveyrone who learns biology "learns" that Lamarck was a quack. Now, well, maybe he was kinda right somehow. The ancients weren't stupid. They may even have had more native intelligence than we do, since breeding patterns were still eugenic in the past (aka dumb people were killed off).

Similarly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if leeches and bleeding had some health giving effect. Perhaps it allows your body to make more appropriate white blood cells when you are sick.

BTW, can you recommend some good popular books on this subject? "Devils drugs and doctors" was one of my all time fave reads.

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Re:Roman Gladiators ate a mostly vegetarian diet and drank a... by PhasmaFelis on Thursday October 30, 2014 @04:53PM (#8535743)

> Eveyrone who learns biology "learns" that Lamarck was a quack.

I wouldn't say that. Lamarck's theory wasn't pulled out of his ass; it fit the facts available to him, just like the phlogiston theory did. It happened to be wrong, but it wasn't because Lamarck was stupid.

Incidentally, leeches actually do have a place in modern medicine: after reconstructive surgery, they can be used to draw blood out of the affected area in a gentle, controlled fashion, reducing swelling and internal clotting and letting the several blood vessels heal much more reliably. This has nothing to do with the ancient use of leeches, though.

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