THE HIPPOCRATIC MEDICAL TREATMENT OF FRACTURA MANDIBULAE TRACED IN A BYZANTINE WARRIOR OF THE 14TH CENTURY

Abstract

This article addresses a rare palaeopathological case of fractura mandibulae involving a Byzantine warrior of the late 14th century. The medical treatment and aspects of the healing regimen, providing glimpses of the human condition during the most tumultuous last 100 years of the Empire as experienced at the provincial fort of Polystylon (ancient Abdera) at the shores of the Aegean Sea in Western Thrace, also reflected on the continued implementation of an intervention approach that had been recommended ca. 1,800 years earlier by the Hippocratic corpus.