Description :

For four days the city of Genoa (Italy) hosted over 5 scholars from 60 different countries convening for the 3rd European Colloquium of Ethnopharmacology (after Metz and Heidelberg) and the 1st International Conference of Anthropology and History of Health and Disease.
The scientists, who work in countless fields of research using the most diverse methodological approaches (medicine, pharmacology, anthropology, botany, ethnology, history, philology, sociology, psychology, geography, philosophy and the like), gave an up-to-date eclectique and « polyphonic » picture of the most recent developments in the various disciplines with regard to the subjects proposed. The latter were particularly vast, and not by chance : in the near future, in fact, the health-care strategies of the different populations are bound to become an essential heritage common to the whole world.
The papers collected in these pages represent a fascination itinerary in the history of health and discases, since the ancient times of humanity (paleopathology), to the first historical periods, to the last centuries. The subjects discussed are different and interesting, from the toxicologies knowledge of Greeks to the imùpac t of epidemies on different societies, from the perception of diseases in historical eves to the medical and traditional books of prescriptions ; a mosaic of great interest and scientific value, that will interest the historian, the physician, thne philosopher and the biologist as well.