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Health, Lifestyle and Responsibility: Historical Roots and Current Perspectives. The question to what extent health and disease are matters of individual and collective human responsibility was first raised and systematically discussed in ancient Greek medicine and philosophy in the 5th and 4th century BCE. This chapter discusses the consequences of these discussions for the definition of the aims and methods of the medical art, in particular the preservation and enhancement of health and the prevention of disease through lifestyle-related prophylactic and therapeutic measures. It also considers some of the implications of these ancient discussions for today’s theory and practice of preventative and lifestyle-related medicine.
Concepts of Man – Concepts of Health: A Glimpse of Their Relationship in Antiquity With Relevance to Our Day and Age. Referring to ancient miraculous healing narratives, this article argues that concepts of health are inextricably intertwined with concepts of man. However, the relatively autonomous idea of medical treatments based on scientific reasoning is not an invention of modern secularization. It already existed in antiquity – even among people of faith. Gods and other religious authorities were regarded as mediating factors; they were not held responsible for diseases or cures. Examples from Christian and pagan traditions show that the interplay between ideas of man and concepts of health were extremely complex and diverse. Obviously, this was true already in antiquity – but it is even more evident in the present. Dualistic confrontations (e. g., pre-modern versus modern times, pre-scientific healing vs. academic medicine) are of little help to achieve universal health care and global health.