Title: Vulnerable Bodies: Roman Medical Research and the Enslaved.

Abstract: Roman doctors periodically required bodies, both living and dead, for medical demonstration and research. There were many vulnerable bodies in Roman society--animals, the enslaved, the impoverished, the outcast, and the conquered--and this talk will explore which bodies doctors seem to have favored for which purposes. As it turns out, their use of the enslaved appears to have been surprisingly curtailed. The talk will therefore also address Galen's perspectives on slavery and the enslaved and explore the potential boundaries to the exploitation of this particularly vulnerable population.