
Roman Gladiators ate a mostly vegetarian diet and drank a tonic of ashes - diodorus
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141020090006.htm
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JamesSwift
I'm always fascinated by the 'correctness' [1] of medicinal treatments in
ancient times. Here, the paper explains that the ash tonic effectively served
as a mineral supplement to promote bone healing. Is it just coincidence that
they medicated in this manner, and it ended up being beneficial? Did they
somehow know that the tonic was effective for these means? If so, how? Or is
this just me weighting the 'correct' choice of remedies higher than the likely
multitude of faulty choices that were made in those times?

[1] Poor choice of word, but can't think of a better one

~~~
benbreen
I'm a medical historian and I think about this all the time - it's a more
complex question than it initially appears to be. The typical line of
reasoning is to assume that medical treatments "progress" through history as
the efficacious ones win adherents and the ones that don't work fall out of
favor. The problem with this is that the most popular medical treatment in the
European and Islamic world for 2,000 years (bleeding) was medically worthless
(well, unless you happen to have very high blood pressure).

So were all premodern doctors idiots who couldn't practice empiricism? Well,
no - many of them are extremely intelligent, inquisitive people (people like
Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle accepted bleeding as a treatment, so clearly
"they weren't smart" or "they didn't understand the scientific method" isn't a
good explanation). I think the answer is two pronged. One is simply that the
placebo effect is extremely powerful, so even cures that we consider not to be
efficacious in a clinical setting still "worked" in daily practice as
placebos. The second is to look more closely at what someone with the
scientific mind of Robert Boyle made of bleeding. He actually did do quasi-
experimental trials involving blood loss and concluded that "excessive"
bleeding was bad for human health. By the same token, he started doing
chemical assays of various mineral and animal-based cures (like eating burnt
lizards for epilepsy, and things like that) and began to lay the foundations
for our later (18th/19th century) understanding of which minerals and vitamins
are essential for human health. It's entirely possible that Greco-Roman
doctors were doing similar things, but Boyle had the benefit of the ready
dissemination of his findings via print and the world's first scientific
journal (Philosophical Transactions), which happened to be edited by his close
associate (Henry Oldenberg).

In short I think there was a kind of practical empiricism at work in the
history of medicine that has always existed. But that it didn't begin to
coalesce into clinical effective treatments until print culture made it
possible for people to share their findings on a global level. This wasn't a
simple march out of ignorance toward truth, though. And the reason for this is
that the placebo effect of remedies like bleeding often "worked" just as well
as the partially-effective treatments of premodern times, like, for instance,
supplementing poor diets by eating the ashes of various animal and plant
products.

~~~
Jun8
David Deutsch
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch))
has an interesting take on explaining why intelligent people in history did
not converge on the correct theories sooner (not just in medicine, e.g. in
physics, so noise created by placebo effect does not explain those), namely
that if you have what he terms a bad theory empiricism or intelligence will
not let you iterate to the correct solution as most people assume. You can be
stuck at a local minimum.

If you have 15mins, watch his TED talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation?language=en).

~~~
benbreen
Thanks, I'll check this out. Historians of early modern science have a
favorite example of this, phlogiston.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)

Phlogiston theory is utterly wrong as an explanation for fire, but it "saves
the appearances" (conforms to observable physical phenomena) quite well. I
think Thomas Kuhn talks about it as an example of a mindset that required a
paradigm shift to be thought about differently in _Structure of Scientific
Revolutions,_ which seems to be along similar lines as what I gather is
Deutsch's Karl Popper-influenced take on scientific knowledge-making.

------
steveplace
> The vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights.
> Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates,
> such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the
> arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. "Gladiators needed
> subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from
> cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight." Not only would
> a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show.
> Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. "If I get wounded
> but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt
> much, and it looks great for the spectators."

Source:
[http://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html](http://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html)

So yeah if I want to have a higher body fat percentage, I guess I could do
this.

~~~
gohrt
Does this prove that bodyfat is from carbs, not fat?

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dghughes
> mostly ate a vegetarian diet. There is virtually no difference in terms of
> nutrition from the local "normal population."

I would consider that to be a normal diet, even today I know I don't each meat
everyday. My mother told me her family on the farm in the 1950s only had meat
once per week at the Sunday dinner, sometimes not. This was normal for this
region people were not called vegetarians it was just a normal diet; meat was
expensive and hard to store.

>drank ashes after training as a tonic.

I wonder if it was an ancient belief of gaining the power of the item you were
consuming in this case a volcano similar to eating tiger or bear would give
you their strength.

~~~
elorant
_I wonder if it was an ancient belief of gaining the power of the item you
were consuming in this case a volcano similar to eating tiger or bear would
give you their strength._

It has nothing to do with that. In Greece where I live, in the past ashes were
used to filter water. Even today it’s used in pastries as in bakery because it
helps in digestion and cleans the bowel from infections.

It has dozens of other uses, from cleaning dishes and pottery to fertilizer
(that’s why some of the best wines are produced in places where used to be
volcanoes). It can also drive insects like ants and roaches away, can be used
in soaps, on open wounds to help disinfection, etc.

~~~
brimstedt
Also, ashes are basic (? I mean Non asidic) which is good for you.

~~~
eropple
"Basic" works here, but as an alternative you might consider "alkaline" (which
pulls double duty, both as "related to the alkali metals" and "has a pH over
7").

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smilliken
Ephesus, where the bones are from, is a remarkable city:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephesos](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephesos)

Much of the stone architecture ruins still stand, including an ampitheater,
library, bathhouses, and much more.

------
IndianAstronaut
A vegetarian diet and eating of ashes is quite common today in southern India.
The ashes are eaten as part of religious ceremonies.

------
bane
"The result shows that gladiators mostly ate a vegetarian diet. There is
virtually no difference in terms of nutrition from the local "normal
population." Meals consisted primarily of grain and meat-free meals. The word
"barley eater" relates in this case to the fact that gladiators were probably
given grain of an inferior quality."

1) You don't waste expensive food on people who are about to die stabbing each
other to death for your entertainment.

2) You don't even bother to waste good grain on them.

3) Most people ate a mostly vegetarian diet, meat is expensive and hard to
transport.

~~~
qwerta
> You don't waste expensive food on people who are about to die stabbing each
> other to death for your entertainment.

you have no idea. Gladiators were something like sport celebrities.

~~~
pyre
While this is true, it _was_ a blood-sport. When a soccer player loses a
match, he/she can go on to win later. If you lose a duel to the death, you're
dead.

~~~
rational-future
Not true, very small percentage of the fights ended with death.

~~~
omegaham
And most of those were convicts getting executed. Get the people warmed up by
killing some nameless criminals, and then send in the stars.

------
hoodoof
Eating burnt food is a risk factor in intestinal cancer. Those gladiators
should look out for their health.

