Metal mirrors to reflect the light.
Unfortunately most people today get their history from Hollywood movies. That’s why there’s a widespread – and mistaken – idea that people in ancient and medieval times used burning torches for illumination.
They used oil lamps and candles indoors. Mostly oil lamps around the Mediterranean where olive oil was easily available, and mostly tallow candles in northern Europe.
Surgical operations were always done in bright sunlight if possible, and as @DrDeth says, mirrors could be used.
They were very into it, they just didn’t consider it the same thing. Gladiatorial combat, for instance, was a form of sacrifice to the manes, definitely in origin but nominally still so in the later popular entertainment form. Not a sacrifice to the major deities, though, which may have been the distinction the Romans were making.
Most early cultures in Europe and the Near East had no problem with infanticide, when considered as just “exposure”. In Rome, it was mandatory for a deformed infant. A notable exception was the Egyptians, who went so far as to rescue those babies the Greek and Roman overlords cast away. Apparently they were considered weird for this. I can’t help but think the Jews were influenced by this culture as much as by their need to differentiate from their immediate neighbours. The European tolerance of infanticide by exposure continued into the European Middle Ages.
The say humor is lost on some people…
Scientific American had an article decades ago on a factory that mass-produced lamps in Roman days, using a set of molds for the top and bottom pieces.
The thing is, like so much we do today - we literally “stand on the shoulders of giants”, where thanks to centuries of scientific method and half a millennium of the printing press, almost everyone knows what thousands of experts have collectively determined to be the most correct way of doing something - whether it’s making medicines or performing abortions. I don’t imagine there were many people doing anatomical explorations of first trimester cadavers to determine what they were looking for to perform an abortion, let alone off-the-shelf tools and facilities (including lighting) to properly do this except maybe in the sunshine. There were not an array of textbooks at the local university library to reference. Nor the understanding of infections to properly allow even elementary survival.
(even about 170 yeas ago, Semmelweiss had trouble persuading fellow physicians about hand-washing. Today it’s gospel.)
Yet as I understand (Not a doctor) any decent physician could probably do a safe D&C in the early stages of pregnancy by the early 1900’s, thanks to the information revolution. (In the book/movie The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler set in 1950’s Montreal, the protagonist’s brother IIRC is almost expelled from medical school for doing an illicit abortion)
On the contrary, in Roman times there were many medical textbooks and many medical colleges, both military and civilian.
Infection was well understood, and dealt with more effectively than any in any Western medical system before the late 19th / early 20th century.
From this article on History.net about Roman military medical care: (Civilian care was at least as good.)
It was standard Roman surgical practice to clean instruments in hot water before use, another important practice the West did not rediscover until the late 19th century. Roman doctors never used the same probe on more than one patient, an important clinical practice that helped avoid surgical contamination. Roman wound washes, especially acetum (a form of wine almost turned to vinegar), were more effective than the carbolic acid method promoted by 19th century English surgeon Joseph Lister. The use of barbarum, a powerful antiseptic compound that modern experiments have proven effective for treating deep flesh wounds, also reduced infection rates.
The Roman practice of removing decayed or foreign matter from the wound before and after repeated cleansing helped reduce the rate of tetanus and gangrene, as did loose bandaging, regular bandage changes and the use of surgical clips instead of sutures to close wounds. The use of lint and honey, an old Egyptian wound dressing, was particularly effective, as honey was the most powerful and effective known bactericide until the 1928 discovery of penicilin.
Celsus wrote a standard and widely used medical textbook in the early 1st century CE:
Celsus devoted an entire chapter of his medical manual to infection and was the first physician to describe its clinical symptoms and progress in his famous formula (still taught to medical students today) that infection was recognized by rubor et tumor cum calore et dolore (“redness and swelling with heat and pain”).
Roman military hospitals also sound pretty good:
Spoilered for length
The high survival rates for wounded Roman soldiers meant that many then needed short-term and/or convalescent care. During campaigns, before the Romans built permanent forts, physicians provided such care in tents arranged in an open rectangle. When the Romans did build permanent medical facilities, they retained the same configuration.
A Roman military hospital was called a valetudinarium . Overseeing it was a chief medical officer, the optio valetudinari , who reported directly to the legion’s praefectus castrorum . The plan of these hospitals reflected a level of medical sophistication not seen before in the ancient world and not seen again in the West for centuries. The entrance opened into a large hall lighted by clerestory windows, used as a triage center when dealing with mass casualties. Beyond this hall was an operating theater, also lighted by multiple windows. Adjacent to the surgical theater was a hearth room for the sterilization of instruments and dressings. The east side of the hospital contained the kitchen and pantries that provided special diets for convalescing soldiers. The western outer wing contained baths, dressing rooms and lavatories. Three wings comprised the wards, with small cubicles arranged in pairs on either side of a wide corridor —a common floorplan in modern-day hospitals. Small side corridors separated the rooms from the main corridor, reducing noise and lessening the risk of contagion. Hospital staff set aside a few rooms for patients requiring isolation. Other areas housed examination rooms and the hospital mortuary. The roof was designed to provide adequate cooling and ventilation, and a central heating plant insured adequate warmth. Each legion hospital was constructed to accommodate 5 to 10 percent of a legion’s strength, or 250 to 500 casualties.
Pedanius Dioscorides, a 1st century Roman military physician, was the most famous pharmacologist of antiquity and the author of De Materia Medica , the ancient world’s largest compendium of herbal and chemical remedies. The standard work for more than a millennium, it is still read today.
Incorporation of most of the “known world” into the Roman Empire expanded the store of clinical knowledge upon which physicians could draw for new drugs and medical techniques. Roman medicine borrowed Indian surgical techniques, including plastic surgery and cataract removal. And so many drugs came from India that Pliny complained about it in his writings.
Medieval understanding of infection was also far better than most people would imagine today.
Look up the treatment of Henry V’s arrow wound. It happened when he was a young man, before he became king, at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
He was struck in the face by an arrow which penetrated his cheek bone, went 6" deep and lodged in the bone at the rear bottom of his skull.
John Bradmore, the surgeon who treated him – entirely successfully – wrote a detailed account of his treatment, which included several measures to control infection. They included washing out the wound with a syringe filled with diluted white wine (alcohol), sterilizing instruments, bandages, and packing material for the wound with heat, using honey and an antibacterial ointment to control infection.
Henry recovered fully, and went on become king, win the battle of Agincourt, and conquer half of France.
So good treatments were common when the would was accessible from the outside; but abortion is akin to keyhole surgery, and surgeons in those days would be “flying blind”, one presumes. Again, I don’t know much about their abilities, as others’ posts have shown, but I strongly suspect that successful surgery, or even escaping the procedure with just sterilization as a result, was rare.
So with all this discussion, were there any indications until recent times that surgical abortion was part of the repertoire of physicians in earlier times? (other than admonitions not to stick oneself with a needle)
That’s… bullshit.
The entire Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) is read out loud in synagogues every calendar year. This has been done for literal thousands of years. There is no part of it unread or unheard by everyone going to the synagogue.
A “messianic Jew” is more properly called a “Christian”.
I think Abraham was doing what his God told him to do and wasn’t thinking that far.
Also, the name is usually spelled “Isaac” in English. But you do you. Just please don’t tell everyone else what to do.
Huh. I always thought that was so there would be no witnesses. If he came back down without Isaac he could claim wild animal attack or falling off a cliff or something.
Making the enemy look bad and dehumanizing them is an old, old tactic. There’s a reason right there.
Given that Judaism has roots in the culture of Bronze Age pastorialists I expect the death rate from disease, accident, and conflict was high enough that keeping the population numbers up was a preoccupation. Killing off viable infants (either pre- or post-birth) put the tribe at risk in a dangerous world. I doubt the people of those times could comprehend a world of 7.5 billion people such as we have today.
The word used for destruction in greek, φθορα, mostly translates to decay or corruption. This sounds like the practice of just leaving an infant to die on its own which I understand was a common practice. It also makes sense to use that phrasing for letting it die this way over the view it means to kill it in the uterus which I would WAG would be described much differently. It also make the verse very clear, don’t kill your baby and don’t try to get around it by allowing it to die on it’s own.
Abortion just does not seem to fit here. It seems to me to read quite clearly, if the person makes it out of the womb alive it gains the right to life and a right to support as a child.
Just replying to my own post above, from this link which cites Didache 2:2 , actually provides support for it point that it was about leaving a newborn to die on it’s own and the verse in the context they use it has nothing to do with abortion:
If-good luck to you!-you bear offspring, if it is a male, let it live; if it is a female, expose it.
I have to say that article made me roll my eyes several times. 
It’s not a good idea to get your history from people who are invested in promoting a particular religious point of view, and don’t care much about facts or history.
Yes, thank you for the article, I needed a little levity this morning. I find it amusing that someone can write an article like this and not reference Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which devotes a chapter to this question, written by someone who spent a lifetime studying the Romans’ society.
If I recall the gist of it, basically the old Roman religion was a lackadaisical not too structured convenience for their society, lacking the fanaticism and communality of the early Christian church. (And other mystic cults) Once the church got hold of the wheels of government and could force adoption of the religion, it was game over.
Decline and Fall was written in the 18th century. It’s totally and utterly outdated, and many (most?) of Gibbon’s views have long since been superseded and discredited.
It was an important work in it’s own time, and no doubt entertaining reading, but nobody today would take it as any kind of authority, or cite it in support of anything.
There is a point in there where “nursing the sick” is claimed - leading to both more survival of Christians and conversions. I read the same thing in a novel once - any truth to that?
No. That’s something that certain Christians like to believe, but it has no basis in fact.
In the pagan Roman and Greek world, temples of Asclepius functioned as hospitals and healing centers.
Asclepeions included carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing. Treatment at these temples largely centered around promoting healthy lifestyles, with a particular emphasis on a person’s spiritual needs.
But they had trained medical doctors as well as priests, and offered even surgery if necessary, as well as other medical treatments.
Hippocrates is said to have received his medical training at an asclepeion on the isle of Kos. Prior to becoming the personal physician to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Galen treated and studied at the famed asclepeion at Pergamon.
Signature to asclepian medicine was its holistic approach to patient care. It emphasized therapy through the natural environment, hence the carefully chosen locations, as well as care for the patient’s psychological and emotional states.
They also offered nursing to the seriously ill and dying.
The [Asclepeion of] Epidaurus also served as a sanctuary for those who were extremely ill. It was eventually expanded to a one hundred eighty-room institution to house the dying and women in labour during the Roman Empire.
Reconstruction of the Asclepeion of Kos:
Anyone, rich or poor, could go to an Asclepeion for treatment. They were asked to make a donation according to their wealth, but there was no fixed fee.
Yeah, and he blames everything on Christianity, including the Library of Alexandria.
Which, again- is not canon. There are reasons for that.
In that era when there were no copyrights or royalties, it was common to “make shit up” and then attribute it to someone famous. Sort of like George Washington and the cherry tree. There are gospels too like the one about Christ as a child causing his teacher to drop dead…
True, there are reasons for that stuff being non-canon.
But Gibbons’ points remain valid, although he was writing in his time - the church was a community where all were more or less equal, which had to appeal to the lower and middle classes in the empire. It also had that mystical quality “these things are beyond human ken”, a divine being watching over everyone with mercy, and a promise of a much better afterlife. The leaders and proselytizers of the church tended to be fanatical.
we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. It will, perhaps, appear that it was most effectually favoured and assisted by the five following causes: I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.
Meanwhile, the Greco-Roman pantheon created no such deep attachment. Indeed, Gibbon recounts how when an emperor after Constantine tried to re-assert the old religion, it failed miserably.
I seriously doubt that any emphasis on reproduction or healing had any positive benefit on the proportion of population that was Christian. The church did not win by outbreeding or outlasting, since the majority of its members were converts (and then, by imperial edict). Indeed, being a member at first was a way to reduce the population of the church.
So it is not canon AND is apparently not about abortion.