A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from The Healing Arts of Greece and Rome by J.C. McKeown

Author:J.C. McKeown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

Seneca practiced the frugality that he preached so vehemently. Actually, he rather overdid it, for when Nero forced him to commit suicide, he had considerable difficulty in killing himself:

Seneca and his wife opened the veins in their arms with a dagger at the same moment. Since his aged body was wasted by his spare diet, allowing his blood to escape only slowly, he severed the veins in his legs and behind his knees as well. … His death dragged slowly on, so he asked his trusted friend, Statius Annaeus, who had medical experience, to give him hemlock that had been prepared earlier, the poison used to execute condemned people in Athens. He drank it, but it had no effect, for his limbs were already chilled and his body resisted the effect of the poison. In the end, he got into a pool of hot water … From there he was carried to a bath, the steam from which suffocated him (Tacitus Annals 15.63). His wife’s wound was bound up, and she lived on for several years, but without fully recovering.

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