Asclepiad (title)

It is uncertain as to who an Asclepiad was. Some theories hold that they were priests of an Asclepion in ancient Greece.^[1] The Asclepiadae could also have been a guild in honour of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, separate from the healing temples and closely related to Hippocratic tradition. Plato gives Hippocrates this title in his Protagoras, referring to him as “Hippocrates of Cos, the Asclepiad”.^[2] It may also be a group of people who claimed to be descended from Asclepius.^[3] Asclepiades was the name of several physicians, some of whom probably assumed this appellation either as a sort of honorary title in allusion to the ancient family of the Asclepiadae, or in order to signify that they themselves belonged to it.

See also

• Asclepiades
• Hippocrates, who was raised as an Asclepiad.

References

1. ^ Rutkow 1993, p. 21
2. ^ Jowett  1927, p.43
3. ^ Jones 1868, p. 39

Bibliography

• Jones, W. H. S. (1868), Hippocrates Collected Works I, Cambridge Harvard University Press, http://daedalus.umkc.edu/hippocrates/HippocratesLoeb1/page.ix.php .
• Jowett, B. (1927). "Protagoras". In William Chase Greene. The Dialogues of Plato. New York: Liveright Publishing Corp. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/protagoras.html. Retrieved July 8, 2011. 
• Rutkow, Ira M. (1993), Surgery: An Illustrated History, London and Southampton: Elsevier Science Health Science div, ISBN 0-801-6-6078-5