The “Second Order”

Abstract

While there is a growing body of scholarship on the ancient “medical marketplace,” the interactions between healers and other types of craftspeople are far less studied. This article examines the links between ancient healers and two types of craftspeople, stone engravers and painters. It suggests that healers and these other craftspeople used similar substances, sometimes worrying about counterfeited products; that physicians may have procured pigments and stones from painters/pigment sellers and stone engravers, respectively; and that some painters/pigment sellers and stone engravers may have acquired not insignificant medical knowledge. It concludes that healers generally, and physicians in particular, were part of an ecosystem of craftspeople, in which hierarchies may not always have been those that we find presented in the work of an author such as Galen, who considered himself superior to stone engravers, painters, and other artisans.