Missing in a more authoritative translation by Lutz (1947) that would have The last sentence at face value, but its sense (and placement) are completely 39).Īlthough the passage is not referenced, it is from Musonius' lecture 'Onįood' (XVIIIB), summarized in Greek by one of his students. Troubled with gouts, dropsies, colics, and the like, than those who,Ĭondemning simple diet, live upon prepared dainties' (p. Those that feed meanly than those who feed daintily and that, generally, the Than servants countrymen more strong than those who are bred in the city,

'That masters are less strong, less healthy, less able to endure labour (Curiously, NriaguĬharacterizes the translation as a transliteration.) Hummelberger, a sixteenth-century editor of Apicius. Pseudonym Dick Humelbergius Secundus, a whimsical allusion to Gabriel The Table, Kitchen, and Larder, a farrago of gastronomical He takes as his source Apician Morsels or, Tales of Was pandemic among the Roman aristocracy and a manifestation of lead Quotes the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus to support his contention that the At the end of his article on saturnine gout, Poisoning, Absolutely zero.' Such was the contention that the topic evoked.īut the criticisms seem valid. Thirty years later, the comments still rankled, Nriagu retorting inĪn interview that 'Scarborough knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about lead Sources and being uncritical of the translated material that he did use,Ĭautioning that 'The decline of the Roman Empire is a phenomenon of greatĬomplexity and it is simplistic to ascribe it to a single cause.' More than Medicine and archaeology, also criticized the author for not using primary Waldron, a specialist in both occupational The reader cannot trust the basic arguments.' He concluded that, althoughĪncient authorities were aware of lead poisoning, it was not endemic in the Typographical errors, and a blatant flippancy regarding primary sources that

That 'lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman empire.' Yet, a review by Scarborough, a pharmacist and classicist,įound the book to be 'so full of false evidence, miscitations, There, and in a book published later that year, he argued Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them.'Ī 1983 article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Jerome Nriagu,Ī geochemist, rekindled a debate that had been dormant for almost two decades. 'The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.

Lead poisoning antidote