In college, before becoming an English major — and therefore borderline unemployable — I was in something called The General Program. “General” in the sense that it was designed to be a survey of human thought — all the greatest hits. This of course was before the discovery of Asia or Africa or South America — or minorities. We did know about women. We even read Emily Dickenson. And most of us were vaguely familiar with Cleopatra and Susan B. Anthony, and that seemed to pretty much cover the topic.
So, in an educational universe very different from today’s, I got a scattershot classical education. Discussing Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Freud, and the boys. Exploring THE BIG QUESTIONS in small seminars. (Actual discussion question: “If Newton discovered gravity in 1666, where was it until then?”)
The patron saint of this sort of thing was another dead white guy, a Roman known as Pliny the Elder. Back in the first century CE, Pliny set out to collect all human knowledge — all of it! — in his Naturalis Historia. Though little of the massive work remains. we do have Pliny’s handy medical tips.