Skip to content
Skip to main content

About this free course

Become an OU student

Download this course

Share this free course

Health and wellbeing in the ancient world
Health and wellbeing in the ancient world

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

3.3 The pulse of love

Whether you classify a pulse by numbers or by ‘feel’, what does it mean for your health? Professor Helen King and Dr Laurence Totelin discuss how the pulse was used in the ancient world to diagnose the disease of ‘lovesickness’ and how the ability to detect this became a mark of a great doctor.

One of the doctors who used this ability to enhance his reputation was Galen in the second century CE. He wrote his own account of his diagnosis of the wife of Justus.

Read pages 95 and 101–103 of the following link to Galen’s account then watch Video 6: http://galen.bbaw.de/ epubl/ online/ cmg_05_08_01.php [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . (Note, you can reach these pages most easily by typing page numbers into the box on the right of the word ‘Seite’ (page) and then clicking OK).

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 6
Copy this transcript to the clipboard
Print this transcript
Show transcript|Hide transcript
Video 6 The pulse of love
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).