Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 61However, this extrapolation of a ‘theology’ from the statements aboutthe divine character of the disease presupposes three generalisations whichare in themselves questionable, and which appear to be inconsistent withother assertions in the treatise. First, it is ignored that there is a differencebetween calling a particular phenomenon ‘divine’ in virtue of a certainaspect or characteristic, and speaking about ‘the divine’ (to theion) inageneral and abstract way. As a result, it is tacitly assumed that by definingthe divine character of the disease as its being caused by natural factors (oras its having a nature) the author implicitly confines the range of the divineto nature or to the regularity which natural phenomena show (as if he notonly said ‘Nature is divine’, but also ‘The divine is identical with nature’).Not only is such a generalisation of the use of the word theios dangerous initself, but it also lacks any textual justification, for in none of the ‘positive’statements does the writer use the expression to theion in an abstract way.In fact, the only instances of this use of to theion are 1.25 (6.358 L.), 1.27(6.358 L.), 1.31 (6.360 L.) and 1.45 (6.364 L.), where the expression seemsequivalent to hoi theoi (‘the gods’). 39Secondly, it is assumed that what the writer says about the divine characterof diseases holds of every natural phenomenon or event (‘natural’ fromour modern point of view, e.g. earthquakes, solar eclipses, etc.) and that inhis view all these phenomena show a similarly regular pattern of origin anddevelopment and are therefore divine in the same sense as diseases. 40 But,strictly speaking, the author of On the Sacred Disease merely denies thatepilepsy has a divine origin in the traditional sense (in which theios impliestheopemptos, ‘god-sent’), and he asserts that it is not more divine than otherdiseases. This need not imply that all other phenomena are divine in thisnew sense of ‘being natural’ ( panta, ‘all’, in 18.2 refers to nosēmata, ‘diseases’),nor that a particular phenomenon is divine only in this sense. The authorleaves open the possibility that there are other things which may be theeffect of divine dispensation (in the traditional sense), for example divineblessings, and the idea of divine dispensation or intervention as such isnowhere rejected. We may even wonder whether the author really rejectsevery appeal to divine healing, for in spite of his self-assurance concerningthe curability of the disease (18.3–6, 6.394–6 L.), he admits that in some39 For other instances of see 1.4 (6.352 L.), where the expression obviously means ‘the divinecharacter’ (sc. ‘of the disease’); 1.11 (6.354 L.) is ambiguous: may be synonymous with , but it may also mean ‘the (allegedly) divine character of the disease’, as in 1.20 (6.356 L.) and1.26 (6.358 L.); in 1.28 (6.360 L.) is best translated ‘the divine character they talkabout’: there is no question of meaning ‘pious’ here (contra Ducatillon (1977) 199).40 See Nörenberg (1968) 75: ‘Insofern ist alles bis zu dem Grade göttlich, in dem es an diesen Naturgesetzenteilhat.’